


a renaissance evergreen

by ThoughtfulConstellations



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League (2017), Justice League - All Media Types, Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman (Comics), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: A.R.G.U.S., Ancient History, Bisexual Diana (Wonder Woman), Bisexuality, Coma, Emotional Sex, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Modern Era, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Wonder Woman (2017), Prophecy, Psychological Trauma, Reunion Sex, Romance, Wonder Woman (2017) Spoilers, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 22:01:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 106,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulConstellations/pseuds/ThoughtfulConstellations
Summary: Steve expects to see flames in front of him, to see flames on him as they eat the dismembered pieces of his physical shell, but when he opens his eyes, he doesn’t see fire. He doesn’t see the dark grey clouds through the plane’s glass window in front of him. What he sees instead is a woman in front of him wearing a sharp suit and an unreadable expression on her face. Despite the confusion and the bleariness, Steve wonders why a woman is wearing a suit, but he doesn't get the chance to ask as the woman steps forward.“Captain Trevor. Welcome back.”





	1. Prophecy

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stand when my faves die, so here's a fix-it fic for Wonder Woman. For the most part, I'll be pulling from mainly the DCEU movie, but since we don't know much about Steve Trevor's canon background in the DCEU, I'll be using some creative license as well as pulling stuff I like from the comics, namely Wonder Woman v5, aka Wonder Woman Rebirth!
> 
> Yes, this is a fic with a good old-fashioned Ancient Greek prophecy (that I made up) so I'm kind of (definitely) going a bit (a lot) out of my comfort zone as a writer here, but I really wanted to get my hands on these guys as they've absolutely destroyed me. I love getting feedback, but no pressure if you prefer to be a silent reader. Enjoy! =)

_Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end,_

_One hundred years to make amends._

_A blood price paid, Her pain awakes_

_The goddess who no longer needs to wait._

_The River Styx with all its bones_

_Will send its travellers wand’ring home_

_Rise again, the Fates command_

_For only She can save the land._

_Fear not death, the dead will walk the Earth_

_Sacrifices turned into birth_

_A tool of purpose to the goddess defy_

_Someone must win, someone must die._

* * *

Steve feels heat across his skin, and his eyes pop open. He expects to see flames in front of him, to see flames _on_ him as they eat the dismembered pieces of his physical shell, but when he opens his eyes, he doesn’t see fire. He doesn’t see the dark grey clouds through the plane’s glass window in front of him. What he sees instead is a woman in front of him wearing a sharp suit and an unreadable expression on her face. Despite the confusion and the bleariness, Steve wonders why a woman is wearing a suit, but he doesn't get the chance to ask as the woman steps forward.

“Captain Trevor. Welcome back.”

* * *

When Steve gains consciousness again, the woman is no longer there. Now a man is looking at him with a frown on his face, clearly unhappy to see Steve there, but Steve has no idea why. Ignoring the IV in his arm, he pushes himself into a seated position, and he squints up at the man. “Who are you?”

“I’m more interested in who _you_ are,” the man counters. He’s in a black suit, and Steve can tell that the fabric is high quality—expensive. The man’s tie is too thin and too long, but the suit is perfectly tailored to his body. “What can you tell me about yourself?”

Steve narrows his eyes at the man, instantly suspicious. “I’m not telling you a thing until you tell me where I am.”

The man ignores him. “What do you last remember?”

“Where am I?” Steve asks again. He feels the familiar sensation of his defense skills clicking into place, feeling how he’s imperceptibly taking inventory of the room and what he can use as a weapon. “You don’t sound German.”

“I’m not,” the man says simply. He looks at Steve, reading his body language. “You’re in Gotham.”

“Gotham?” Steve is incredulous. “What the hell am I doing in Gotham? I was in Belgium last time I checked.”

“What’s your name?” the man asks. “I told you where you are, and you can trust that you’re safe here.”

Steve grits his teeth as he looks at this stranger in front of him, this stranger who seems to have answers Steve desperately wants to know. “Where’s that woman who was here when I woke up? She knew who I was. Who is she? How does she know me? How do _you_ know?”

“I never said I knew you,” the man says smoothly.

“If you didn't know me, you wouldn’t look like you already knew the answer to the question before you even asked it.”

The man stares at Steve for a few moments, and then he nods. “Yes. I know you. But I need to know that _you_ know you.”

None of this makes sense to Steve. He stares defiantly at the stranger, his fight or flight instincts growing stronger, and just as he’s about to lash out, the stranger speaks again.

“Before you hit me, what does the name Diana mean to you?”

* * *

“What time is it?” Diana slides the soft white gloves onto her hands and picks up the delicate piece of pottery in front of her. Just from looking at it in this brief second, she knows it’s Roman, but she has to pretend she doesn’t just have this information in her head. “I have a lunch meeting I’m supposed to go to at 1:00.”

Estelle, Diana’s young and competent assistant, pulls her iPhone out to check. “It’s 12:18 right now.”

Diana’s expression turns slightly frustrated, but she continues looking over the ancient bowl. “Not as much time as I was hoping for to get the accession report finished.”

“Miss Prince, cancelling would be unwise as these are very important donors.”

“I won’t cancel,” Diana says to put the girl’s mind at ease. “I will be at this very important meeting with these very important donors to woo them into very generously sponsoring the 2020 exhibit.”

“You also have to sign off on some of these grants.”

“Now that’s good and easy.” Diana sets the bowl down, makes some notes on the form in front of her, and reads over it again. “Also less time consuming than to try to squeeze the rest of this in before lunch.”

Diana’s cell phone on Estelle’s desk starts to buzz, and Diana glances at it. “Who is it?”

Estelle picks it up, looking at it. “Bruce Wayne. Do you want me to answer?”

“No, I’ll call him back when I’m done,” Diana replies as she writes down a few more measurements to do with the bowl. After a few moments, her cell phone buzzes again, and she sets it down with a small sigh. “Bruce?”

“Yes.” Estelle holds the phone up, and Diana quickly pulls her gloves off and goes to her assistant’s desk. If Bruce is calling twice from his personal phone, something important must be happening, and if it’s got something to do with his project, she knows she needs to answer it now. She slides her thumb across the screen to answer, and she walks away from Estelle’s desk for privacy.

“Hello,” she greets. “Perfect timing. You caught me right before lunch where I’m supposed to charm a bunch of rich art enthusiasts into sponsoring a huge upcoming exhibit.” 

“I don’t think you’ll be going to lunch,” Bruce says on the other line. “I need you in Gotham immediately.”

Diana frowns, slightly irritated by Bruce’s typically abrupt way of expecting everyone to drop everything when he tells them to, but also confused as to the urgency. “Now? Bruce, this is an extremely important lunch. If I send Estelle, it won’t look very good.”

“I don’t think you’ll want to go to lunch,” Bruce replies. “Trust me. It’s an emergency. I wouldn’t call you and have you send your assistant into the shark pool if it weren’t.”

“Are we talking life or death? Because if it’s that serious—“

Bruce interrupts her. “Not life or death. But you need to be here.”

Diana hesitates. Since she’s known Bruce, which admittedly, hasn’t been very long, he’s been nothing short of trustworthy. He’s kept her secret and has even covered her tracks even more effectively so nothing from the past can be traced to her. And yes, if Diana’s being honest, she’ll acknowledge how nice it feels to finally have someone who knows the truth, someone who believes in the same things she does and has the same amount of determination. “Bruce…”

“Trust me.”

Diana glances over her shoulder back at Estelle, already anticipating her assistant’s upcoming reaction. She knows she may regret this, but she also knows she can trust Bruce. Sighing, she looks down at the ground and puts her free hand on her hip. “I’ll be there as soon as I can."

* * *

Bruce doesn’t answer any of her calls, texts, or emails while she’s on her private plane, which frustrates her to no end. Of course he would tell her he needed her in an emergency and not tell her what for—of course he would promise to donate for the exhibit if the men she’d been prepared to pump at lunch were too miffed by meeting with her assistant instead of her. Of course he would do all of that.

The plane ride is far too long, and it’s late by the time she lands at the airport. As quick as her own personal Wonder Woman way of travelling would have been, the need for disguise is still present, and so she’d had to settle for civilian travel. The time zone already has her a little disoriented, but she feels herself snap to attention when she exits the jet and sees Alfred with a Wayne car waiting for her right outside.

“Miss Prince!” he calls out to her over the sound of the plane. “Wonderful to see you again!”

“Thank you, Alfred!” she calls back to him, and she crosses toward him. “What in the world is going on? What’s gotten Bruce so riled up?”

But if she’d expected to get any answers out of Alfred, she’s severely disappointed when he gives her a little smile and says, “I think it would be best if Master Bruce told you himself, but I assure you, Miss Prince, that the urgency with which he ushered you here is not for show.”

Hearing Alfred’s words doesn’t comfort her any, and she frowns a little as she gets into the backseat of the car. Bruce is always mysterious—she knows this to be true. Even though she knows the truth about who he is the way he knows the truth about her, she knows there’s still a part of him he keeps closed off from her. And really, she doesn’t mind. She keeps a part of herself closed off from him, too, and she prefers to keep it that way.

Alfred can sense that she’s too wrapped up in her own thoughts for too much conversation, and so he lets her have her time to herself. Diana has always known she could trust him.

* * *

Bruce is waiting for her by the time she enters the cave. She never thought she’d find a batcave enjoyable, but she’s found that she doesn’t hate the time she spends here. Sure, she needs some fresh air and sunlight after a certain point, but she also doesn’t dread leaving the sun to go down to Bruce’s center of operations. As she walks toward him, she tries to read his face, to get a sense for whatever it is that’s so urgent.

“Diana,” he says levelly.

“I’m here.” She comes to a stop in front of him and looks at him. “So what was so important it justifies shoving off a bunch of money hungry old men onto my poor assistant?” 

Bruce’s face doesn’t change. “I need you to be calm.”

“I’m calm,” she retorts, growing a little irritated with how strange he’s acting. “But I want to know what’s going on, and you’re not telling me anything.”

Frustration swells up in her chest, and she has half a mind to pull out her lasso and use it on him right then and there. However, she knows that that wouldn’t be the best or the most effective plan, and so she doesn’t do it, no matter how much she wants to.

“I have something you need to see,” Bruce says, and then he turns and starts down one of the many hallways that make up the maze of the cave. Irritation growing, she follows behind him. “Diana…”

“What?” she asks. “Are you going to tell me, or are you going to make me guess?”

“I…I don’t think any words could be sufficient,” he says. For the first time since she’s set foot in the cave, his face shows a little flicker of thought over his face. She studies him closely, as if looking at him long enough will show her the answers. “But please keep in mind that there’s more to what’s going on than what you think.”

Diana bites back an agitated response, and she makes herself nod. “Ok. There’s more to it than what I think. Ok.”

As they reach a certain door, Bruce slows down and looks over at her. She slows down beside him and looks up at him, curious and confused all at the same time. Bruce starts to speak again, but he cuts himself off and shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

At that, Diana is instantly alarmed. In the time that she’s known Bruce, she’s never known him to apologize for anything. She frowns at him and takes a step toward the door when he gestures to her to go on in. Her heart beating a little wildly due to a strange combination of curiosity and concern, she puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it. The light sounds of her heels clicking across the floor echo through the empty black halls of the cave. The sound travels into the room she’s walking into, and when she stops, so does the clicking.

There in front of her is a man sitting on a hospital bed. He sits like he’s exhausted, his body language drooping downward while also giving the idea that he’s antsy based on how he’s bouncing his knee. Diana takes another step into the room as he lifts his head, and suddenly, she stops breathing. Shockingly blue eyes meet hers, and she’s reminded of the Themysciran sea, of eyes that had belonged to a man she’d pulled from that very sea.

“Diana,” the man breathes, relieved, and he stands up to go to her.

Steve.

Diana’s heart drops all the way down to the floor, and she stares at him with huge eyes, watching him as he stands up and moves toward with a look on his face that can only be described as pure relief.

“No,” she whispers. “No. You can’t be here.”

Steve stops walking and frowns, looking every bit as confused as she’d looked only moments before. “Diana? What are you—“

Diana interrupts him. “You’re dead. I watched you die 100 years ago. You are not him.”

“What the hell are you—“

“Diana.” Bruce has stepped into the room without Diana even realizing it, and her head whips in his direction, her eyes blazing.

“What kind of sick joke is this?” she hisses, starting toward him but stopping herself. “What is this? Who is he?”

“Diana, it’s me,” the man calling himself Steve insists. She looks back over her shoulder at him and then again at Bruce.

“What is this?” Her voice is enraged and full of pain, and she’s so angry she can’t even think to cry.

“This is your Steve Trevor,” Bruce says evenly. “I’ve run my own tests on him to confirm his identity and to make sure he’s not a metahuman with morphing powers, and it’s him.”

“Wait, you performed tests on me?” Steve asks. He puts his hands on his hips. “For Christ’s sake, what the hell is going on?”

Diana does the only thing she can think of to do—quickly, she reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out the lasso. She watches Steve’s eyes flick down to it, and she holds one end out to him. “Tell me who you are.”

“Diana—“

“Tell me.” Her eyes burn into his, and she waits. For a moment, he looks like he’s going to outright refuse, but then he seems to think better of it. As she watches him step forward and take the end she’s offering, she can’t hear anything but her heart pounding so loud it sounds like it’s coming from inside her brain. She’s silent, watching him the way a prison guard surveys a death row inmate, and there isn’t a single echo of a sound in the room. The man calling himself Steve wraps the lasso around his wrist, and Diana is reminded of a time so many years before when he’d promised he was taking her to the front.

“My name is Steve Trevor,” he says firmly, returning her gaze without looking away. “I don’t know where the hell I am, but I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“How are you here?” she demands. Her eyes flick down to the lasso and catch its gentle glow. If he were lying, he’d be in much more pain, but as far as she can tell, the man isn’t in pain at all. He seems apprehensive, but he’s clearly not hurting from the lasso compelling him to spit out a truth he’s fighting to keep inside. As much as she dares not hope for it, she starts to wonder if he’s telling the truth.

“I don’t know. Last thing I remember is being in a plane. Some details are a little fuzzy, but I remember the plane, and then I woke up, and I was here,” he says. Then he glances over at Bruce and nods in his direction. “He wouldn’t tell me anything about what was going on until you got here. Said he owed it to you.” He pauses. “He’s a little intimidating.”

“Amanda Waller had him,” Bruce interjects. “He’s been kept underground and off the grid for a long, long time. Alive but in a coma. Then earlier this week, he regained consciousness, and Waller alerted me.”

“Why did Amanda Waller have him?” Diana asks, turning away from Steve to look at Bruce and read his face. Bruce has his arms folded over his chest, and he doesn’t look particularly enthused by the current situation, but he also doesn’t look at Steve as though Steve’s a potential bad guy. For Bruce, that’s a compliment and speaks volumes.

“Amanda Waller has a lot of things I wonder that same question about,” Bruce drily answers. “But she knew who he was. She had his file and knew of his connection to Wonder Woman, and so she contacted me where I then arranged for his transportation to Gotham.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not quite following,” Steve says loudly to catch both of their attentions. “Can someone tell me in explicit terms what’s going on?”

“I watched you die.” Diana looks at him and feels her chest ache in a way she hasn’t allowed it to in years. Ever since she’d walked in that room and seen his face, she’d been numb. But as she looks at him and sees how Hestia’s lasso is only giving her the truth she’d been so afraid to believe, she feels a deep ache akin to the grief she’d experienced when she’d lost him 100 years ago. “You went up in that plane and sacrificed yourself so that millions could live. You cannot be here.”

“Diana…I don’t know what to tell you,” Steve says with a bewildered and slightly helpless look on his face. God, that face. She’s pictured that face so many times in the past century since his death. From her childhood all the way up through to the present, she’s always prided herself on her acute memory, but as she looks at Steve now, she realizes she’d forgotten so many details that are now so glaringly in her face, she doesn’t know how she could’ve ever forgotten them in the first place. Like the way the corners of his eyes crinkle whenever he squints his eyes in disbelief. Or the way he quickly licks his lips when he’s buying time to come up with something to say. How could she have forgotten any of this?

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she says with conviction, as if the number of times she repeats it has any kind of control over how reality will play out. Will correct itself.

“The lasso’s telling the truth.” Bruce takes another step toward her. “Diana. You can trust what you’re seeing in front of you. Please know that I would never have called you here and made you face this pain if I weren’t 100% sure that this is Steve Trevor. The same one you knew.”

Diana’s head snaps in his direction, and her eyes grow heated with that dark fire they get whenever she’s angry but trying to contain her anger. “How long have you known? How long have you had him here?”

“A week,” Bruce replies. Even without the lasso around him, he knows better than to try to lie to Diana, especially since this lie would be told only to spare her feelings. He has far too much respect for her to do that. “I’ve kept him sedated while I completed my tests. It was much safer to do that than risk him being a flight risk.”

“I would’ve been a flight risk,” Steve confirms, blurting the statement out due to the lasso’s influence. “I’m still thinking of running, but the only reason I haven’t is because you’re here. I’m also very confused over what’s going on, and _still_ no one’s giving me answers, which quite frankly, is seriously starting to irk the hell out of me.”

Diana stares hard at him, and for a moment, it looks as though she’s about to snap, but then she lets out a breath and slowly goes to undo the lasso. Glancing over at Bruce, she starts unwrapping Steve. “How much have you told him?”

“Nothing,” Bruce bluntly answers.

“No surprise there,” Diana mutters under her breath. Once she has the lasso off of Steve completely, she doesn’t speak. She doesn’t move toward him or away from him. She just looks at him with silence in her throat and on her face. If Steve has anything to say, he doesn’t. Instead, he simply stares back at her with a mixture of emotions all over his face.

His face. Steve’s face.

Suddenly, Diana blinks hard as she feels hot tears fill her eyes, and she presses her lips together into a hard line to fight the emotions back. She’s had many opportunities to think back to certain moments from years past and how she would redo them now, but she’s never allowed herself to think about what she would’ve done differently for Steve. Thinking about “what ifs” that had to do with him had always been too painful, and so she’d locked those wandering questions deep in her heart with the hope that maybe they’d dehydrate and die for good in there. But as she looks at him, as she looks at the face she thought she’d never get to see again, she realizes that the biggest possible “what if” she ever could have dreamed up is standing in front of her.

Before she can stop herself, she reaches up with one hand to touch his cheek. Her fingertips lightly ghost over his skin, and she nearly gasps when she feels how warm—how _alive_ he truly is. Steve closes his eyes at her touch and leans his cheek into her palm before turning to kiss the heel of her hand.

“Diana,” he says quietly.

Diana swallows and blinks again. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

“Yeah. It’s me. I just…what’s going on? Can you tell me that?” Steve’s eyes search her face for any kind of answer he can get just from looking at her. “What about the War?”

“Steve…”

“What happened with the plane? What do you mean when you say you saw me die?”

“Steve…” Diana starts again, and this time she puts both hands on his face as she looks into his eyes. “Steve. The War is over. It’s been over for a long time.”

Those little crinkles in the corners of his eyes return as he squints at her to try to understand what she’s saying. “A long time? What are we talking here—a month? Two months? Three months?”

Diana takes a breath. “One hundred years.”

Steve blinks quickly, and he stares at her in complete confusion. “Wait…wait, what? You were serious? What are you—“

“The War ended in 1918. The same year you died, the _very day_ you died. And now it’s 2018, a full 100 years from the last time you were conscious. 

Steve stares at her. Briefly, Diana wonders if this is how he’d felt on Themyscira when he’d learned that the Amazons didn’t know what the War was, let alone the Germans. He looks over at Bruce and then back to her, and he shakes his head a little bit.

“Steve…Steve, talk to me,” she pleads, stroking his cheek without even realizing it as she looks up at him with huge worried eyes. It’s been so long since someone has been worried about him, she realizes, since everyone who had known him is now dead. Everyone except for her.

Steve sucks in a breath, and then he lets it out. “Oh, shit.”


	2. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, madhatter7777, blainecarraway, Maegmel, and Ni_Castle for commenting! :)
> 
> Thank you for such encouraging feedback to a first chapter! I really appreciate all kind words!
> 
> Before we jump into the chapter, there are some historical mentions, namely the Philippine-American War. You don't need to know too much about it, but I did want to give a little more background on it here in case anyone is a history nerd like me and would appreciate the context:
> 
> The Philippine-American War was a conflict between the United States and the Moro (the Muslim community) population of the Philippines. The duration is officially listed as 1899 - 1902, but there was still conflict happening all the way up until 1913. The specific incident Steve is talking about is known today as the Bud Dajo Massacre, which took place in March 1906. Since DCEU!Steve's backstory isn't known, I'm filling in some of my own details here by putting him at 34 years old, meaning he would've been 22 years old at the time of the Bud Dajo Massacre. That also places his birth year at 1884.
> 
> So all of that being said, here's Chapter 2! Enjoy! :)

“The prophecy is in motion.”

“He is awakened then?”

“Yes, my Lady. His thread burns.”

“Good.”

* * *

On the outside, Diana appears calm. She sits calmly on the edge of the bed, but on the inside, she’s anything but. Her blood roars, and her heart is a tornado. Steve is beside her, but he doesn’t look as calm as she does, though to say that he looks worked up wouldn’t be accurate, either. Regardless of what’s going on in his head, he looks confused and concerned more than anything, and Diana can see he’s processing everything she’s just told him. Everything he’s known—every _one_ he’s known is gone except for her. In a way, it’s like there’s a grieving process he needs to begin but doesn’t know how. For a few moments, Diana doesn’t say anything. She knows what it’s like to be shocked by the world around her and how different it is from the one she’s grown up in, and she doesn’t want to rush Steve into dealing with the world until he’s ready.

Even though she wouldn’t admit it in front of Bruce, Diana’s glad that Gotham’s knight discreetly slipped out of the room to give her time alone with Steve. And in that time, she’s filled him in on everything he’s missed, though she chooses to give only the highlights. She tells him about the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, all of the particularly noticeable events that have taken place around the globe in the past century. She tells him about domestic terrorism and deplorable leaders. She tells him about heroes and the humans she’s met who reminded her of him because they were the ones to risk it all for the sake of innocent lives. She tells him everything.

When she’s done talking, all Steve can do is sit there and process, and that’s how Diana finds herself waiting for him. She notices that her hand is on his arm, his other hand over hers, but she doesn’t remember reaching out to touch him, though she knows she must have done it with the intention to comfort him. As she sits there beside a man who’s supposed to be a ghost in her brain, she isn’t ashamed to admit that it feels so good to touch him, to have his heartbeat right beside her again. The only things that separate his pulse from her fingertips are three layers of skin. Skin, blood, and the endless map of veins and capillaries that make up who he is on the outside.

“So I’ve been in a coma for 100 years,” Steve finally says, and he looks at her with shock and disbelief embedded in his features. “And they call you Wonder Woman.”

“Yes,” she replies simply.

Steve takes his hand off of hers and runs it down over his face, closing his eyes as if he has a headache. “And this woman named Amanda Waller somehow got her hands on my coma corpse and kept me in a highly classified area while she looked into me, and then she called Bruce Wayne when I woke up.”

“Yes,” Diana repeats. The ridiculousness of the situation when said out loud doesn’t escape her notice. “However, to my knowledge, she hasn’t told Bruce how you came into her…” She pauses as she tries to think of the right word, wanting to phrase it in the best way. “…care.”

“Do you have any idea how I’m alive?” He squints at her a little bit. He still looks so bewildered, but Diana can’t blame him; she can only imagine how she would look and feel in this situation, and perhaps she’s selfish for wishing they could have a happier reunion, but she knows better than to lament the circumstances. She’s learned the hard way not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“No,” she admits. “You’re supposed to be dead. A plane exploding so high up in the atmosphere like that…there’s no way you could have survived.”

Steve lets out a breath and looks down at his free hand as if he’ll find the answers to all of his questions tattooed across his skin in neat, legible ink. “And yet.”

“And yet,” she murmurs in agreement. “Bruce might have more answers from the tests he’s run, so I’ll ask him later.”

For the first time, Steve realizes that Bruce isn’t there in the room with them anymore, and his eyes flick over to the door. “Right. The guy who kept me here under sedation for a week and ran tests on me.”

“He’s not very good at first impressions,” Diana says with a little sympathetic wince, and then she offers Steve a quiet smile. “But he’s a good friend and one of the only people in the world who knows the truth about who I am. In fact, he tracked down the original of the only photograph you and I appear in together. And he did that out of the kindness of his heart.”

“Photograph…” Steve repeats under his breath as he reaches back into his memory. “Photograph! The man in Veld. He took a photograph of all of us.”

Diana smiles wider at the relief of recognition in his eyes, and she nods. “Yes, that photograph. Bruce managed to find the original. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Anyway, I don’t think I want to know the strings he pulled in order to get his hands on it. At least, I didn’t want to know at the time. Any little connection to you…”

Her voice trails off, and she looks down at her hand on his arm. She keeps thinking she’ll wake up and find out she’s been under one of Circe’s spells, or she’ll discover she’s been thrown into an alternate universe. But everything feels so real to her that she knows it couldn’t possibly be the effects of a spell or an alternate universe. Nothing feels quite the way reality does, and Diana’s lucky she can sense true reality a little easier than mortal humans can. So no matter how much she wonders if Steve’s sitting here beside her is all part of a cruel ploy from someone in her rogues gallery, she knows that her greatest hope is the truth.

“Diana,” Steve says softly, and he puts his hand back on hers. “Diana.”

She meets his eyes then and feels her throat close up. In all her 100 years in the world of mankind, she’s never seen anyone whose eyes are as blue as his. Even now as she looks at him, she remembers what it was like to see them for the very first time when he’d opened his eyes on the beach. She’d been surprised to discover that they were the exact color of the water surrounding Themyscira, a shade of blue that had seemed all throughout her childhood impossible to replicate.   Silent, she reaches up and puts the back of her hand against his cheek. He’s so warm to the touch, and she finds it remarkably comforting. After all this time, all these years, Steve Trevor is where she can touch him and breathe him in again.

Steve closes his eyes and moves his head into her caress, the look on his face showing that this seemingly small gesture of affection hasn’t come soon enough. Diana’s heart just about breaks then, but she swallows down her feelings and simply looks at him. To him, the War had raged through the hearts of men yesterday. To him, just the day before had she crossed No Man’s Land.

But for Diana, she’s crossed a century’s worth of No Man’s Lands. Even though she hadn’t donned her armor until Doomsday came to destroy Metropolis, she’s walked headfirst into open fire and deflected screaming bullets for 100 years. Men who believed they were entitled to her body, who believed she, by nature, wasn’t as smart or as strong as they were had been a plague in itself, and that was only barely scratching the surface of the other landmines that had come across her path. She wonders how it is that she’s now experienced far more than Steve has, but as she looks at him, she feels her old child-like optimism stir just the tiniest bit inside her.

“I don’t understand how you’re here,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “So many years…”

“You don’t look a day over…however old you were the last time I saw you. Which feels like yesterday to me, but I guess time has a way of passing much quicker when you’re asleep for it all.” Steve lifts his hand off hers again and uses it to push back some hair from her face. The little gesture feels so natural and right that Diana has to hold her breath or she’ll fall apart right there.

“How are you real?” she murmurs. Steve looks as though he’s going to answer with a joke, but he seems to lose the inspiration to say it, choosing instead just to look at her. “There are so many things…so much to show you about the world of today. Nothing is the same.”

“One hundred years is a long time. To put it conservatively.”

“You’ll have to learn how to use a cell phone, air conditioning, the Internet…I don’t know how to even get you started on all of that,” Diana says, her voice becoming fretful as she thinks of all the things Steve doesn’t know how to use.

“Hey. I’ll get it at some point. Maybe not for another hundred years, but I’m a quick study.” He tucks that small strand of hair back behind her ear when it falls out of place again, and his features soften with his gaze. “Right now I just want to see you. When I made the decision to detonate the plane, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but here you are proving me wrong. Again.”

Diana’s heart flips, and she longs to bury her face in his shoulder and hide there away from the world, but she doesn’t. She’s Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, princess of the Amazons, daughter of Hippolyta, and Diana Prince, but now it’s her turn to be the leader and help him adjust to his new role in the world. If anyone needs to face this new challenge head on, it’s she. As she gazes at the collar of his shirt, wondering how he got it since the last outfit he’d had on when she’d last seen him was a German uniform, a thought comes to her. Her eyes flick up to his and widen in realization. “Your watch.”

“Yeah…” Steve nods, though he isn’t quite following where she’s going with this declaration. “Yeah, my watch. I gave it to you.”

“I still have it.” The urge to jump up and fly all the way to Paris to get it and show it to him is hard to ignore, but she manages to push the emotion-driven impulse down. “It’s safe and in good condition. I promise.”

“Jesus, I feel like I gave it to you yesterday, not 100 years ago,” Steve mutters. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to wrap my head around it.”

“In a way, it might be better you missed some of the things that happened.” Diana’s eyes grow distant then as she thinks about the images of the Holocaust she’s seen, the horrors of humanity at their worst in countries all across the globe, and then she pushes the images out of her head. “It wasn’t all Wifi and smart cars.”

Steve’s expression is blank, and she shakes her head a little in a non-verbal way of telling him not to worry about it. Without thinking about it, he rubs his thumb over the back of her hand. “But you did something about it. You’re still here, and so’s the world.”

Suddenly, Diana grows still, and she has to look away. She feels a little sick and a little panicked from the admission that teeters on the tip of her tongue. Steve notices her reaction, and he lowers his head to catch her eye again. “Hey. Diana. Hey. What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head without looking at him still. “I’m ashamed.”

“Diana?” He brings his hand up under her chin now to gently make her look up at him. “What is it?”

She can’t pull her head away from him, can’t reject him so suddenly like that when she’s just gotten him back, and so she escapes from his gaze the only way she can and closes her eyes. “I did nothing.”

“What?” He doesn’t understand.

Diana’s eyes open, and she looks at him with shame and sorrow evident even in how she breathes. “I did nothing. I became Wonder Woman for this world when I put my armor on two years ago to help stop Doomsday from obliterating Metropolis. Remember? How I told you that’s when Bruce Wayne and I met?”

He nods, but he still isn’t following. “Yeah…yeah, I remember.”

“That was the first time I’d worn it since the day you died.”

Steve is quiet for a few moments, but then he nods a little. “Ok. Ok. So you took some time off.”

“No,” she says and gives him a slightly sharp look. “I don’t get to be an exception. If you see something wrong in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something. I did nothing.”

The words Steve’s father had told him so many years ago hang in the air between them, and then he takes a breath, like he’s working up the nerve to tell her something. “Before I went into the Army, I did nothing,” he starts. “I knew I didn’t want to be on my family’s farm working from sun up to sun down for the rest of my life, but…I did nothing. I sat at home and read the news of the war in the Philippines. And when I was old enough to do something, I sat and learned military strategy in the safe comfort of a classroom _still_ doing nothing, though this time I was able to convince myself that I was taking action. But then when I’d learned everything I’d needed to, I was shipped off to the same Philippines I’d read all about, and I was there for Bud Dajo, and I stood there doing nothing but watch people all around me be killed. Watching the 'enemy' who were just villagers...innocent people who just...watching the men I’d gone to school with, had _trained_ with…I’d been fooling myself all that time in my classes up until then. I hadn’t done a single thing, and even as I stood there watching my friends fall to the ground or be the _cause_ of someone dying, I couldn’t do anything. So.”

For a few moments, Diana has no idea what to say. Now isn’t the first time since she’s known him that she’s realized she doesn’t know very much at all about him, but she’s reminded of just how much she doesn’t know. She knows very little of his childhood, his schooling, his family, and even his likes and dislikes. In a strange, uncomfortable way, she realizes he’s a stranger, and her grip on his arm tightens just the tiniest amount.

When she speaks again, her voice is soft. “Was that your first battle?”

He nods. “My first. And I froze. Did nothing because that’s what I’d known up until that point, even when I’d been fooling myself into thinking I wasn’t just sitting still while other people fought and died instead. So when I came home from the islands, I told myself I wouldn’t do that ever again, and I had to do all I could. “But my point is: you’re not the only one who’s stood back and watched destruction take place and not do anything to stop it. So I don’t think of you any differently, Diana.”

Diana doesn’t know how to respond to such honesty that comes from a deep place of mixed emotions for him, but she sees the myriad of thoughts and feelings he’s currently experiencing as they play over his face and meld together. Like her, he looks none too proud of his admission, but unlike her, there’s a trace of acceptance she picks up on. Through the tension in his body, she reads that same determination and willingness to sacrifice everything for the world shine through just like it had that night in France so long ago. She makes her touch even gentler when she puts her hand on his wrist. “You’re a good man, Steve.”

“And you’re a good woman,” he says back to her, his voice mirroring hers.

“I have a lot of time I need to make up for,” she starts to explain, but she doesn’t know how to express exactly what she means. However, she doesn’t need to because Steve nods to show he understands what she’s trying to communicate.

“Me, too.” He gives her a little smile that, for just a flash, appears borderline bitter, but the tiny quirk of muscle barely flickers across his lips before it’s gone. For several moments, they just sit quietly together. The silence is comfortable, and it feels surprisingly natural to the both of them. The need to speak and fill the quiet of the room with sound doesn’t surpass the gentle enjoyment of just being near each other again. Diana remembers that first night on the boat when they’d left Themyscira, the awkward silences and verbal foundering that had taken place as they’d tried to figure the other out. But now, after 100 years of silence between them, this silence is comfortable.

“Are you tired? Do you want to sleep?” Diana asks as it dawns on her that all of this excitement might be tiring for someone who’s mortal the way Steve is.

He shakes his head. “No. Seems like I’ve slept too long, anyway. I don’t really want to miss out on anything that’s happening now.”

Even though Diana has never personally experienced what he’s going through, she understands, and she accepts his response. “Alright. Is there anything I can get for you? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Actually, I’d love something to eat,” Steve admits a little sheepishly. Diana smiles at him and stands.

“Then I will get you food. I’ll be back, alright?” she asks, reluctant to let go of his hand but knowing she needs to. Steve’s eyes follow her face, and he quietly smiles as he gives a simple nod in response. As Diana leaves the room to go find Bruce, she realizes she feels a warm hopefulness deep inside her she hasn’t felt for a very long time.

* * *

When Diana finally locates Bruce, he’s in the lab. She knocks a little on the glass wall and walks in through the crystal clear doorway. “Bruce.”

He doesn’t look up from the pipette he’s using to measure out some fluid from a small glass tube, though he acknowledges her presence. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” she replies and crosses closer toward him. “There’s been a request for food, which doesn’t sound so bad now that I think about it, too.”

“Alfred’ll whip something up right away.”

“Thank you.” Diana’s eyes flick curiously down to the tubes. “What is this? A new project?”

“Re-testing something.”

Diana waits for Bruce to continue speaking, but he doesn’t. “What is it?”

“I’d prefer to wait until I have these second results before I discuss it with you.”

“Well, now you have to tell me.” She eyes him, taking in how methodical and calculated he is when he’s in the lab. He’s always been very precise about how he does things in all parts of his life, but the lab is a different experience altogether. “What is it?”

Bruce’s eyes glance up toward her and then back to the tube. Diana gets the feeling he’s trying to see if she’s prepared for what he’s about to tell her, and she’d be irritated by his instinct for secrecy if she weren’t grateful to him for having told her about Steve. Finally, he sets the pipette down and writes something down in a notebook beside him. “I found an odd element in Trevor’s blood. I’m unsure as to whether or not it’s lethal, but it’s an element I haven’t seen before.”

Diana’s heart just about stops, and she takes a moment to remain steady. “So there’s a chance that Steve might not be safe? He might have something in his blood? Like a disease?”

“No,” Bruce says quickly. “It isn’t any kind of disease, bacteria, or infection. Nothing like that. But it’s an element that looks like it _should_ be on the periodic table but _isn’t._ If my readings come back the same this second time, then I’ll know that it wasn’t an accidental contamination of the biological matter, and I can put more time into figuring out what it is.”

“Let me see,” Diana says. Giving Bruce a look that tells him she won’t take no for an answer, she crosses toward him and looks at the test results and tubes in front of her. “Show me.”

Without hesitation or argument, Bruce points her to a microscope. “Look at that slide. You can see it through the microscope there.”

Diana does as he tells her and looks through. Human biology is something she’s taken an interest in since first coming into the world of mankind. She doesn’t love it enough to be as adept as a full-fledged scientist with five doctorates in different areas of study, but she certainly knows enough to determine what a normal blood slide looks like versus an abnormal blood slide. As she peers through the microscope, she sees that each blood cell has what looks like a very gentle kind of glow around it.

“Do you see it?” Bruce asks. Diana pulls back from the microscope and nods, looking at him with a strange look on his face. “Diana? What is it?”

“I’ve seen a sample of blood like this before,” she says evenly. “Not entirely exact but…that glow around the blood cells.” She closes her eyes and sighs, feeling the weight of all the years she’s lived on her shoulders. “I’ve seen that before.”

“Where?” Bruce asks with a frown. “I’ve never seen anything at all even close to it, and I’m fairly certain I’ve seen every kind of element under the Sun and even beyond the Sun. Literally.”

“I know,” Diana says and opens her eyes. She leans back over the microscope and peers through again as if to double check that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her the first time. Off to the side, Bruce is asking her for answers, but she isn’t listening as she watches the familiar glow of Steve’s blood cells illuminate the small space underneath the glass.

“Diana?” Bruce is getting irritated now. “Where have you seen it? What is it?”

“We didn’t have a name for it, but we knew it was there.” She pulls back and turns to face him. “The element in his blood is something he picked up on Themyscira. We…all of the Amazons…we have it in our blood, and so I have seen the glow Steve’s cells are emitting in my sisters’ blood and my own blood.”

“There are microscopes on Themyscira?” He’s instantly much more curious as he learns a new little fact about where Diana has come from.

“Bruce.” She gives him a hard look. “There’s more than man’s technology in the world. But that’s not the point I’m making now. What I’m saying is that this element in his blood is from something that can only be found on Themyscira, so that’s why you’ve never seen it before.”

“And?” Bruce prompts.

Diana sighs and folds her arms over her chest, leaning against the table a little. “I think Steve might be alive because of me.”


	3. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, redjacket, blainecarraway, morethanpixels, Toomanyfandomsnani, and LittleMissJanie for commenting! :)
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos, bookmarks, and the sweet comments! Reading such sweet feedback on each chapter is the highlight of my day whenever I get a comment!
> 
> There's a part about bananas changing taste, and that's something that started happening in the 1920s and had completely changed by the 1950s. So the bananas that Steve Trevor would have eaten in the 1910s would have tasted very different from the bananas we eat now. If you want to read more on it, you can Google it and read the exact details because it's pretty interesting to learn about!
> 
> Any guesses on who the lady with the black water is? ;)
> 
> Anyway, here's this week's chapter, and I hope y'all enjoy!

She sees visions in the reflecting pool.

As the woman looks into the black water, she sees things that those around her do not—cannot. Back during the Darkest Hours, she’d seen the signs of this prophecy’s ending far before anyone else had even noticed the stirring of its formation, and by the time her husband had caught wind of it, she had already set everything in motion. He always underestimates her, her husband does. But this time, she knows he won’t. They’ll both get what they want out of this plan, this prophecy.

She looks into the water and sees her weapon, her key to the world, and she smiles.

* * *

“What do you mean?” Bruce asks. “What do you mean Trevor’s alive because of you?”

Diana looks at the microscope as if it’s personally to blame for what she’s about to say, and she chews on her bottom lip as her face shows a hint of anxiety. “After Steve crashed, and I pulled him out of the water, he was taken to one of our healers. And she…she put him in one of our healing pools. The Fountain of Youth, as mankind calls it. This element that’s in his blood is from that pool—that’s why all Amazons have it.”

“The Fountain of Youth,” Bruce repeats, making sure he’s hearing what she said correctly.

“Yes. Amazons use it when ill or injured, and so it was only natural for her to put him in one, too. The element…whatever’s in that water…it binds to its host’s cells, and it heals damaged cells. For the other Amazons, they still needed time to recover, but that pool is one of the reasons why…” She trails off as she gets lost in her own memories now. She doesn’t allow herself to think about Themyscira often—the memories bring her more pain that she cares to admit—but when she does, she feels a painful tug in her chest that reminds her of all she’s sacrificed in order to save Zeus’s precious creations called mankind. Swallowing, she looks away and shakes her head in disbelief. “Now we know it works on mortal humans, too.”

“And it turns them immortal,” Bruce murmurs with a frown on his face. “That Fountain of Youth sounds eerily similar to a Lazarus pit.”

Diana shakes her head quickly at that and looks at him with confidence returned. “No. The Lazarus pits destroy the mind in order to heal the body. Our pools don’t do that—you go in as a person, and you leave as a person.”

Bruce doesn’t appear to be convinced, but he knows better than to argue with Diana when she’s in a mood, and she’s currently in a very clear, particular kind of mood. “I’m still going to run some more tests on Trevor’s blood sample. If I can uncover any more answers from it, I’d like to try.”

“Does Steve get any kind of say in this?” Diana asks, a challenge.

“Does he not want answers as to what he’s doing here? How he survived an explosion that should’ve been impossible for anyone but you and Clark to survive?” Bruce asks back, an equal challenge. He watches Diana’s jaw set as she pulls herself a little taller and brings herself back into the role of Diana Prince, the cool modern woman she’d first presented herself as when he’d met her two years ago.

“I can’t answer for him. His consent isn’t mine to give.” She turns and starts toward the door. “I’ll let Steve know that Alfred will have something sent down for us shortly.”

Before Bruce can reply, though she doubts he would if were to stay, she turns and leaves the lab. So much rushes through her brain and her heart that she can barely keep up with herself. The past 18 hours have been understatedly confusing, overwhelming even, but she feels guilty for finding her situation overwhelming when Steve’s is on a much more intense plane than hers. She makes her way back to Steve’s room and puts on a smile as she walks through the door. Faking a smile for him is something she hates doing, but the last thing in the world that she wants to do is weigh him down even more with her problems.

“Food is on the way,” she announces. Her eyes land on Steve, who’s nursing a glass of water as he sits in one of the chairs beside the bed. In that moment, she doesn’t feel the need to fake her smile because the warm feeling that spreads throughout her body and coaxes the muscles of her cheeks to lift is genuine. “Alfred will have something brought down soon. Have you had the chance to meet him yet?”

“Alfred?” Steve asks, his eyebrows knitting together in a thoughtful expression. “No. At least, not that I remember. The only people I remember seeing since I woke up is the woman—Amanda Waller, Bruce Wayne, and you.”

“Mm,” Diana says with an understanding nod. “Alfred’s a gift. A true delight. I think you’ll like him.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s kind of a hard question.” She pauses, trying to think of the right answer. Her dark brown eyes drift up to the ceiling of the room as she roots through her brain for the most fitting title. “He’s everything to Bruce. Butler, father figure, secretary, chef…you name it, Alfred does it.”

“Didn’t you say something along the lines of a job like that being slavery?” Steve asks. He means the question to be a light tease, but Diana looks a little stricken by the question, like she can’t think of a response. “Hey. Diana, I was kidding you. I just remember you saying to Etta—“

She sees him struggling, mentally beating himself up for thinking he’s said something wrong, and she crosses closer to him before putting a hand on his cheek. “It wasn’t you, Steve. I swear. It’s a lovely memory that I haven’t forgotten since the day it happened.”

Steve looks up at her with eyes full of nothing but pure adoration. Diana’s heart actually hurts as she takes in his gaze, but she smiles at him nonetheless. Without moving away from her hand, Steve becomes a bit more suspicious. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“No. No ‘but.’ As much as the thought of our time together has brought me sorrow over the years, it’s also brought me much joy, and that’s one of the joyful memories for me.” She lets her hand slide up to his forehead and brush down over his nose, fingertips leading the way now as she touches him. “For a woman as old as I am, I have an excellent memory.”

“You’re not old,” Steve replies with a snort, closing his eyes as Diana’s fingers whisper a warm path along the corner of his eye. “You look every bit the youthful angel you did that day I saw you on the beach.”

“I don’t feel as youthful,” she admits. For a second, she regrets revealing this much to him— _he doesn’t need your problems, Diana_ —but when he opens his eyes to see her again, her heart flutters.

Steve holds her gaze for a couple brief moments, and then he reaches up to her face to mirror her touch, his fingertips going to the corner of her eye. “Your eyes are different.”

“They’re the same eyes I had in 1918.” Diana smiles again at him.

“Yeah…but they’ve seen a lot more.” He searches her face with a look that almost seems troubled. “The things you told me about. Everything that’s happened since the War. You’ve seen far more tragedy and pain in the world than most people have.”

“Has it really changed me that much?” she asks, but she knows the answer without needing the verbal confirmation from him. And yet, when he nods, she feels disappointed in herself for not being who he remembers. “Many things have happened since you were last awake.”

“I know,” he murmurs and traces a small line under her eye before lowering his hand. “That’s the part I’m still trying to get used to. You’ve been alive in the world for 100 years, and I’ve been snoozing in some classified government basement.”

Diana gets what he’s about to say, but she doesn’t want to hear it, so she shakes her head. “We’ll get to that. In time. Just like we’ll get to Wifi, smartphones, and all the other fun technology that’s come out since you’ve been under. Ok?”

Steve hesitates just long enough for Diana to wonder if he’ll protest and insist on talking about it now, but then he nods. “Ok. Yeah. We’ll get to it.”

“Yeah,” she repeats softly, eyes still on his face. “We’ll get to it.”

* * *

Steve receives a rude awakening about bananas. Out of all the things to change, he hadn’t expected _bananas_ to be one of the top changed things he’d encounter. Diana explains the science behind why bananas are different, but he’s too shocked to pay as close attention as he normally would. Even more shocking, he feels betrayed by the bananas. Yes, it would make sense for technology to be different. Medical treatment. Clothes. But bananas? In a way, he finds it cruelly unfair to discover that such a small, seemingly insignificant object has become a victim of change, too.

“Steve? Steve, where are you?”

Diana’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts, and his eyes whip over into her direction. Apparently, she’s been talking to him, but he’s been too absorbed in the betrayal of the banana to notice. He clears his throat and neatly folds his napkin, placing it on the now empty plate. “I’m here.”

“Are you sure?” Diana asks, tilting her head. Steve silently marvels at how much bolder she’s grown over the years, and he tries to make sense of it all. The Diana he feels he knows would have accepted his answer, even if she’d known that he wasn’t telling the truth. She would’ve been overly respectful of his personal life and space. However, the Diana he looks at now has a different kind of confidence. How has she changed so much while looking exactly the same?

“Yes,” he answers. “Just…the bananas. Was thinking about those again.”

“It was a huge shock when it happened,” she says in such a way that Steve feels extremely validated. “I didn’t even think about how the taste has changed, or I would’ve warned you.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Still just shocking.” He feels a little ridiculous now for being so hung up on these damn bananas. Behind his eyes, a dull ache builds as a result of all the information he’s processed in the last few hours. He doesn’t remember being prone to stress headaches, but then again, he’s never been under stress that was quite this heavy before. “Anyway. What happens next? Do I get to leave? Where do you live? Where do we go from here?”

Diana’s knee brushes against his under the small table they’ve eaten their food on, and the realization that there hasn’t been a moment when they haven’t touched in some way. Whether it’s been his hand on hers, her hand on his knee, their legs touching beneath the table, they’ve been physically inseparable except for the minor minutes she’d spent talking to Bruce about food.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know if Bruce—“ She cuts herself off, and her mouth twists to the side with displeasure.

“What?” Steve asks as he reads the strange expression on her face.

She shakes her head and looks away. “He might want to run more tests on you, and even if not, I’m not entirely sure what the protocol for this is.”

“Protocol,” Steve repeats. Protocol, a word he never would have expected Diana to use considering how often she’d broken protocol—and how much of an example he’d set for her, if he’s being honest with himself—and for the first time since he woke up, he looks at her a little differently.

“Protocol,” Diana confirms. She sees his gaze and reaches out to put her hand on his leg again. “What is it, Steve?”

“I don’t remember you being one for protocol.”

She lifts an amused eyebrow, taking his statement as a challenge. “Nor I you.”

He laughs a little then and kind of shrugs. “Yeah, I wasn’t exactly the best role model for you in that regard, was I?”

“No.” Diana shakes her head as she grows a little more serious. “You were the best. _Are_ the best.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know if I’ve changed in the time since we’ve been apart.”

“You don’t know that, either,” she counters, and Steve has to give it to her then. She’s right. She’s more experienced than him now, and their roles are truly reversed. The teacher is now the student, and the student has become the teacher in a strange twist of fate, though Steve hesitates to believe in fate, let alone give fate credit for this unorthodox situation. “There’s no need to make yourself seem less than you are. Really, it’s useless because I’ll never believe it.”

Steve feels a small lump in his throat, but he chokes it down and smiles at her, a beautiful and genuine smile that shows exactly how her words affect him. “Thank you. For the compliment. And for everything.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she says simply, brushing off her role in his life as if she were brushing off a piece of lint from her immaculate and very obviously expensive clothes.

“You saved me from drowning in the seas of Paradise Island, you stopped your mother from killing me, which is a _really_ big thing, you blocked that bullet in the alley, you defeated Ares, and here you are now after procuring some deeply appreciated food for me,” he lists, ticking them off on his fingers. He holds his hand up for her to see, and he counts. “That’s five times you did something, and I’ve just barely scratched the surface of all you’ve done to help me.”

“I was only—“

“—doing your duty as an Amazon, protector of mankind,” Steve says as he cuts her off. He keeps smiling at her so she knows he’s only teasing her, and he’s rewarded by the gentle smile she gives him in return. Without speaking, he puts his hand on top of hers where it rests on his knee, and he looks at the differences. Surprisingly, for someone who’s strength and brutality far outweighs his, her hands look delicate and small, her fingers long and slim. Feminine. But as for the actual touch of those hands, they’re anything but. Years of training and aggressive work have toughened the skin of her palms and her knuckles. History is written deep across the lined map of her hand, and if he concentrates hard enough, Steve swears he can read it the way he read his textbooks in school. Military strategy, fighting techniques, what glory and honor and duty mean, all right there in the palm of her hand. Christ, how he loves that, he thinks to himself, how he loves _her_.

The thought hasn’t even crossed his mind that she might have someone in her life, and it doesn’t occur to him now, either. All he can do is stare at her and feel like he’s seeing her on the beach again for the first time. Even though the rescue on the beach happened a century ago, to Steve, it seems like it’s only been a week. Hell, he can still smell the fresh salty air and feel the heat of the sun beating down on him. His memory is as unaffected by the coma as his body has been, and he’s torn between deciding if it’s a curse or a blessing.

Diana turns her hand on his knee over and adjusts so that she can actually hold his hand. It’s the first true sign of intimate affection they’ve shown each other since Steve woke up, but it doesn’t feel forced or awkward. If anything, Steve feels like they’ve done this a hundred times before. Diana’s eyes meet his, so open warm even after all the things she’s seen. “I think I may know why you didn’t die in the explosion.”

Steve shakes his head in disbelief, and he blinks at her, shocked. “What? So you have answers?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. At this point, all I have is a theory.”

“And I’m finding out about this now because…” He trails off, waiting for her to finish.

“Because I just connected the dots myself,” she says in that level, direct way she has of communicating. “When I went to find Bruce, he showed me a slide from the blood sample he’d taken from you. There’s something unusual in your blood. Something that only Amazons have. It’s not lethal, at least it wasn’t for us, but I think it could explain why you’re here.”

Steve pauses. “Are you saying I’m an Amazon?”

Diana can’t help her laughter at that, and her laugh is every bit as beautiful as her smile, just like he remembers. “No. No, you’re not an Amazon. But you bathed in the healing pools we have on Themyscira, correct?”

“If that’s what the weird glowing water was, then yes.”

She nods in confirmation, still looking slightly amused by him. “Yes. Those are special baths we use whenever we need to heal. Rejuvenate. Replenish. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Ok. So. Healing pool. And since I was in it, I just magically got special youth powers?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Whatever’s in the water bonds to cells in the body, and so it always stays with you, and that’s how the healing works. When you bathed in the pools, the healing element in those waters absorbed into your cells, and I’m thinking that that’s what saved you.” She squints her eyes a little as she reads his face. “Did any of that make sense, or did I lose you?”

“Ah, no. No, I’m here.” He gives a half-shrug as if to say that “here” is relevant. “Mostly.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in, and I’m not even entirely certain that that’s what happened, but it’s the best option I can come up with that also makes sense.” Diana’s hand in his tightens a bit, comforting and grounding him. “I told Bruce my hypothesis, and so whatever he’s doing with what I’ve said…I don’t know. He might want to do more tests, he might not.”

“What kind of tests would those be? Throw me off a cliff and see if my skull stitches back together within the next century?” he asks with a cheeky but questioning smile. “I might be able to survive a plane explosion, but if it took me 100 years to get over it, then I’d wager it’d take me another hundred to get over this one.”

“I’m relatively certain Bruce wouldn’t do that,” Diana says, but Steve gets the feeling she’s wondering how sincerely she means what she just said. “But I don’t know what he’ll want to do.”

“I know what I want to do,” Steve answers with a sincere look in his eyes. “I want to get out of here.”

Diana gives him a hesitant look and glances at the door as if she’s expecting to see Bruce standing right there with a stern lecture ready. “If it’s not safe for you to be out…”

“Why wouldn’t it be safe? I can heal.”

“We _think_ you can heal.”

“So let’s test it.”

“Steve.” Diana brings his hand up to her lips, and she kisses his knuckles. Watching her, he doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, and he swears that even his heart goes still, too. When she pulls back, she looks regretful. “I want to leave, too. I want to show you all you’ve missed, but I think we still have a lot that needs to be done.”

“Like what?” he presses. “And you never answered where you live, by the way.”

Diana chooses to answer the second question. “Paris.”

“…as in France?”

“As in France.” She looks less regretful and more amused again like she had only moments before. “I work at The Louvre as a curator with a specialty in ancient civilizations.”

“That…is remarkably fitting,” Steve says. After all that’s happened today, he doesn’t even bother wasting the energy to try hiding his surprise anymore. Their hands are still linked close together, and he smiles as he remembers how she’d held his hand in London because she thought that since they were together as two people, they were to hold hands. “How long have you been there?”

“A couple years now. That being said, even though my main residence is in France, I do have a few places in various spots throughout the United States, so I have an apartment here in Gotham.” She sees his incredulous face, and the corner of her mouth quirks up into a wry smile. “The good thing about being alive for 100 years is the money you can save up over time. Something Etta taught me how to do.”

Once again, Steve is reminded of how everyone he feels he still has in his life is actually gone. Chief, Sammy, Charlie, Etta, his mother, the other boys he’d worked with, fought with…all of them are gone. He hasn’t had a chance to grieve for them yet, but now isn’t the time, either. He can’t think about how he’s the last one left, or he might never stop thinking about it again. First, he needs to move forward.

“I hope I’m not coming across as ungrateful, but I really don’t want to stay here any longer,” he says honestly, catching her eye. “I don’t like sitting and waiting for orders if I don’t have to. I’m in perfectly good working order, I feel absolutely fine…if I stay shut up in here, I’m going to lose my mind, Diana.”

Diana knows she should make him stay, but truthfully, she’s exhausted and would like to go rest in her Gotham apartment. Without a doubt, Bruce would offer her a room here in Wayne Manor, but she wants to be in a space that’s hers. And more than anything, she wants to be alone with Steve and not worry about Bruce coming in at any moment to check on them or do that hovering bat thing he does, no matter how well-meaning it’s intended. She chews on her lip as she thinks over the risks. If she’s right about Steve being able to heal, then there shouldn’t be any harm in leaving with him and taking him to her apartment. However, if she’s wrong, then she could expose him to all kinds of germs in the air his immune system isn’t used to, and she could very seriously affect his health.

But the longer she looks at him, the more she wants to truly be alone and talk about the things they both want to, and so she gently squeezes his hand and stands. “Let me talk to Bruce.”

* * *

After 15 minutes of arguing and numerous promises that Diana will return the second Steve shows any signs whatsoever of acting abnormal, Bruce finally stops _completely_ opposing the idea. He’s far too smart to think that he can allow Diana to do anything, and so he doesn’t deny her permission to take Steve as much as he does try to point out the risks. But Diana is Diana, and before too much longer, she’s sitting in the backseat of one of Bruce’s private cars, Steve on the other side, as Alfred drives them to her apartment.

When they arrive, Diana hugs Alfred goodbye and tells him to take care of Bruce, though she knows she doesn’t need to because that’s what Alfred does. Steve even manages to push past some of his awe and shock over how the world has changed on the outside to politely thank Alfred for the ride over as well as the delicious food he’d eaten before Diana hustles him inside.

The whole elevator ride up to her apartment is silent but not in an uncomfortable way. Steve looks at everything the way she imagines she had when she’d first left Themyscira and had set foot in London. Sometimes she doesn’t believe that she’d ever been that young, that naïve about the world, and yet she remembers all of it so vividly. And if she remembers how she felt, she can’t even imagine how Steve feels right now.

They reach her floor, and she leads him out of the elevator and down the hall where she unlocks a door labeled 382, opening the door and walking inside. She leaves the door open for Steve to come in after her while she looks for the light switch, and when she switches the light to come on, she hears Steve’s footsteps stop. Glancing over her shoulder, she sees him staring at the large apartment.

“I know,” she says, looking genuinely sheepish. “It’s a bit much. Takes some getting used to.” 

Compared to the apartments Bruce keeps all over the globe, Diana’s is much simpler. However, compared to what Steve has known and grown up in, the apartment is huge. Diana remembers that even in the months after the War when she’d lived with Etta and learned how to use a typewriter, their apartment had been so much smaller than what she currently lives in. Occasionally, she finds that she’s ashamed of the wealth she’s accumulated and how she lives when so many others do without, but every space of the apartment is utilized for something. The high ceilings and tall windows provide light and space, two things Diana believes very deeply in. After years of living in small apartments, she’s learned to appreciate space for its true value. She’d taken all of that open air for granted when she’d been on Themyscira, but now she knows not to.

There’s also an extensive but tasteful art collection over the walls that seems to have captured Steve’s eye. He crosses toward a particular painting on the wall as Diana shuts and locks the apartment door.

“I kind of take my job a little seriously,” she says by way of explanation. “I’ve learned to appreciate the art of mankind and all it can convey.”

“What exactly does this convey?” Steve points at the painting in front of him with a completely baffled expression that makes Diana laugh out loud. She walks over to stand next to him and looks fondly at the painting, remembering the story behind it.

“This piece is called _Light under the Canopy_. It’s an abstract painting that was inspired by the artist’s trip to the South American Rainforest. She said that when she looked up at the canopy above her, this was how she felt when she saw it.”

“It’s all swirling color.”

“It is.”

“I don’t see a canopy.”

“Neither do I.” Diana laughs again when she sees his confusion deepen. “An old lover of mine gave that to me as a gift some number of years ago. I’ve kept it on the wall ever since.”

“I see,” Steve mumbles, squinting his eyes as he tries to see the canopy more clearly. “Yeah. I got nothing.”

Diana knows she should ask him if he’d like a drink or something else to eat. She knows she should be a polite hostess and show him where the bathrooms and the bedrooms are. Part of her wonders if he’ll sleep on the couch—she’s noticed over the years that men seem to do that when they feel uncomfortable around a woman. She _knows_ she should do something more than just stand here and look at him, but she can’t bring herself to move. All she wants to do is look at him, and so she does.

After a few moments, he seems to sense her gaze, and he turns his head to meet her eyes. The lights in the apartment are low, but Diana can see straight into those Themysciran blue eyes as if she were looking at him in clear daylight again.

_I can save today. You can save the world._

_I wish we had more time._

_I love you._

A sharp wave of pain swells in her chest, and she has to look away from him, closing her eyes to gather herself back together. Steve steps forward, and Diana feels just how close he is to her.

“Diana,” he whispers and moves his hands to her face. “Diana.”

“Do you remember what you said to me?” she asks with wide dark eyes, her voice mirroring his in an almost inaudible whisper. She’s reminded of the last time they stood together like this, and she moves closer to him as if moving toward him means moving away from the memories playing in her head. “Before you got on the plane? Before I lost you?”

He swallows hard and nods without tearing his eyes away from hers. “Like it was yesterday.”

_I love you._

_I love you._

And then Diana breaks. She leans into him, and she kisses him. For a quick half-second, Steve doesn’t move, and Diana is afraid she’s crossed the line, but then he moves his arms around her waist to deepen the kiss. Now would be the perfect time to tell him she loves him, too, but she thinks if she starts saying it, she’ll never stop. So she doesn’t. Not now. What she does instead is kiss him. She kisses the man who survived.


	4. Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to Rex501st, thesinfulship, sumiandmiga, Toomanyfandomsnani, blainecarraway, and morethanpixels for commenting! <3
> 
> I had a question about the thing with the bananas from last chapter, and basically long story short, in the 1950s, the taste of bananas changed because the common species at that time went extinct, and so a new kind of banana started being grown, sold, and eaten instead! 
> 
> Also had a question about the painting I referenced in the last chapter, and unfortunately, it's not an existing painting. I pulled from my imagination there! And speaking of creative license...hopefully the hints behind Steve's miraculous survival (beyond the Themysciran pools) are getting a little clearer now? If you're into Greek mythology, then I THINK this chapter will confirm some guesses.
> 
> Anyway, here y'all go! As always, I love getting feedback, and I'm so, so grateful to all the positive comments I've gotten so far. Enjoy :)

The woman finds her husband standing beside the River. For so many years, she hated him. When he’d first made her leave her world to become his wife, she’d cried and hated him. As futile and foolish as it had been, she’d even wished him dead.   However, as the years have passed, she doesn’t hate him as much as she first did. She doesn’t love him. But she doesn’t hate him, either.

She speaks. “My King.”

He doesn’t turn around to face her, but he greets her nonetheless. “My Queen.”

“What troubles you?” She walks up to him and stands on the riverbank beside him, her gaze drifting down into the black water only she can decipher. Every now and then, tiny blips of light break the surface before being dragged back down underneath the chopped glass of the River’s skin. These lights her husband can see, but what is beyond them, he cannot. She knows that her gift to see beyond life and even beyond death itself is why he’d wanted her as his queen.

“I don’t believe I ever gave any indication that something bothers me.”

“Thousands of years of marriage make it possible for one to know the other rather well, don’t you think?”

“You’re wise, my Queen.” Her husband turns to face her with interest and curiosity. “What does the River tell you today?”

She shakes her head. “The River doesn’t speak. Only the souls do, and you hear them as clearly as I do. I know they’re never silenced in your head, either.”

“I do,” he agrees and turns back to the River. Silence drifts between them, neither tense nor uncomfortable. Their silence is reflective. Calculating. They listen to the lights in the River twinkle their pleas and relieved sighs, and they wait. Finally, he speaks again. “You’re certain that the hour is soon?”

“Yes, my King. I’ve conferred with the well, and I assure you we’re on the right path. Our key works perfectly and has found its way to the keyhole. All we need to do is wait for the right light in the River, and we’ll have our initial portal.”

“You do excellent work, my Queen. It honors me to be your husband.”

She smiles at him with all the sweetness she left behind her in a time when she still knew what sunshine felt like on her face. “Your honor is my honor. Always.”

* * *

When Diana pulls away to catch her breath, she doesn’t step away from Steve. She’s taken back to the night they danced together in Veld—how close they’d been and how warm and comforting he’d felt when so close to her. Despite how long ago that small, fleeting scene took place, she remembers it as acutely as if she’s watching a movie inside her brain. Whether she closes her eyes or keeps them open, she sees Steve’s gentle eyes looking at her like he’s never seen anything more wondrous.

But she’s not in Veld. She’s not in Veld, Belgium, it’s not cold, there isn’t any snow, and Steve doesn’t smell like gunpowder and dried Earth. She’s in Gotham in an apartment she’s had for years, the faint wisps of floral scent wafting through the air, and the only thing that’s the same is the fact that Steve is with her. However, the Steve holding her so close isn’t the Steve she knew, and yet he is all at the same time in a way that doesn’t make any sense to her. If having him here means not understanding, then she doesn’t want to understand. If she has to choose, she knows she’ll choose him, and she always will.

“Wow,” Steve whispers, bringing her back into reality. “That…that was nice.”

Diana wants to reply, but she can’t seem to find the words. She opens her mouth, closes it, and then she leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes. As she’s learned since she was a child, only to be reminded with even more intensity in the world of mankind, sometimes words can’t express things only the heart can say. So she doesn’t try to say anything. Instead, she listens to the soft sounds of his breathing, feels the warmth of his body around her, smells the lingering freshness of soap that clings to him. She tries to take in this moment with him so she can take it with her and keep it forever.

After a few moments of silence, Diana finds that she’s swaying back and forth. She doesn’t know when Steve started the motion, but he’s the one leading it, just as he’d led their dance in snowy Veld. Again, she has to remind herself that Steve’s perspective is different from hers—in his mind, they’ve only just had this first dance together. One hundred years suddenly feel like an eternity, but Diana tries not to think about how old she feels.

“Swaying,” she says quietly. “We’re swaying.”

Steve’s laugh is light and the tiniest bit musical. “Yeah, we are. Though you probably know much more about dancing now.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that.” She keeps her eyes closed, but she sways with him. “I think I’ve come to appreciate just swaying like this.”

“Just swaying,” he repeats, his voice soft. By this point, Diana’s exhausted from her long day, but she doesn’t want to pull away from him. In fact, she wants to get closer to him, but the only way she can do that is if she had the capability to crawl inside his skin. She continues to sway with him, hearing the song that they’d listened to in Veld playing in her head as well as a chorus of other songs that have made her think of him whenever she’s heard them. Since he’s been in a coma, he’s missed so much music. He has no idea what the new genres and who the biggest, hottest singers are, which will be just one more thing she has to catch him up on, though she believes this task to be easier than some of the other things she still has to teach him.

They stay pressed together as they sway in the half-lit room of Diana’s apartment. Lulled by the warmth of Steve’s body, Diana catches herself right as she starts to get a little drowsy, and she pulls her head back just so she can see his face. “I don’t want to leave you, but I’m going to keel over at any moment.”

“Right!” Steve says, looking bothered with himself for not having considered her exhaustion on his own. “Right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you up.”

“The best reason to stay up,” she replies and means every word of it. She looks over at the borrowed duffel bag Bruce gave him on the way out of the Manor, and she nods at it. “You should have everything you need in there. Extra clothes, toothbrush, toothpaste, anything and everything. Alfred most likely packed it for you, so I doubt there’s anything extra you’ll need, but if you, I probably have it.”

“Yeah. Right.” His eyes follow her gaze over to the bag, but he doesn’t quite let go of her yet. Sweet and gentle, Diana leans up and kisses his cheek, putting her hand on the other side of his face to feel the smooth pulse beneath his skin.

“Come on,” she urges and steps away from him, though she takes his hand in hers. Like an obedient puppy, Steve walks with her to the bag, and he picks it up before following her down a number of long halls.

“You’re sure this is an apartment? Not a maze?” he jokes.

Diana cuts her eyes toward him, but she smiles as she does it. “I know, I know. But it’s safe. State of the art security system for whenever I’m not here.”

“Oh, well, in _that_ case…” he teases. Diana starts to cross the threshold of her bedroom when she feels Steve hesitate a little. Looking back over her shoulder, she meets his eyes. He looks unsure, nervous, and even a bit worried, again reminding her of their night in Veld together. He looks into the dark bedroom where he sees the outline of the bed, and then his eyes flick back toward her with the question written clearly across his face.

“It’s ok,” she says quietly.

“Just…I sleep better on the floor,” he says. Diana doesn’t quite know how to respond. Back when they’d first met, he hadn’t said anything of the sort to her, but now in the present, she also knows soldiers finding the floor more comfortable is a common thought amongst soldiers when they come back from war zones.

“Ok,” she replies with a simple nod of her head.

“Sorry. I just…” He looks for the word, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling while he searches his mental word bank. “Slept on the ground so much during the War. I mean, I know that _technically_ I’ve been in a bed for the past…however many years it’s been since I was found and transported to wherever the hell I was, but…”

Diana sees his discomfort with the topic, so she nods to let him know she understands. “Ok.”

Steve feels like he’s disappointed her, even though she doesn’t indicate anything of the sort on her face. She pauses for a moment to touch his face again, and for a second, she looks as though she’s going to kiss him, but she doesn’t. She just smiles.

“I have a guest bedroom. If you’d prefer to have your own space,” she offers in such a way that Steve feels guilty for, well, for everything.

“I don’t… _need_ a guest bedroom,” he says, not really wanting to be away from her. “I’ve kind of spent a lot of time on my own, I think. Lot of darkness by myself. So.”

“Then if you’d like to find a spot in here, please do.” She’s warm and sincere as she invites him to make himself at home in her home. “If you need anything, please tell me, and I’ll get it for you.”

“Oh, I’ll be good. I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want a pillow?”

“No, thank you. Nothing at all. The floor’s fine.”

As Diana goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth and change into an evening robe, she can’t describe how she feels. Having Steve back has brought her so much more happiness than she can even comprehend, and yet there’s a distance between them of which she can’t pinpoint the origin. She rinses her mouth out and tells herself to stop overthinking everything. Steve is back, and that’s all that matters.

When she exits the bathroom, Steve’s already lying on his side, eyes closed and day clothes still on. She realizes she still doesn’t know where he got the clothes he’s currently wearing—just a regular plain black t-shirt and khaki slacks—and she has to stop as she takes one last look at him before getting in bed and turning out the lights. Steve’s back, she tells herself. He’s alive. Even if she pinches herself hard enough to break the skin, she still won’t be dreaming.

Diana climbs into bed and goes to turn the lamp on her nightstand off, but she stops at the last minute as she remembers Steve’s comment about spending a lot of time in the darkness. One hundred years in a coma. One hundred years of darkness. Lowering her hand, she lies back down beneath the covers and closes her eyes with the lamp still on. As long as she can help it, she’ll never let Steve be in the dark again.

* * *

Steve doesn’t sleep for long. After an hour of light dozing, he finds himself stretched out on his back and looking up at Diana’s ceiling. Part of him wants to wake her just so he can remind himself she’s really and truly there, but he’s not that selfish, though God knows he wants to be. He notices that the lamp on Diana’s nightstand is still on, and he doesn’t know if she kept it going on purpose, but he’s admittedly very thankful to see the comforting glow throughout the room.

When Steve can no longer lie still—he’s always had a problem being still for too long, even as a child—he does his best to move and stand up without waking Diana. Stealthily moving to his feet, he sees Diana’s slow, deep breathing signifying she’s still sleeping, and he creeps toward the door to let himself out into the hall. Her apartment had surprised him at first, looking more like a house situated in the middle of a building, but as Steve looks around at the art in the halls, the style of the decorations, he realizes it suits her. Every inch of her living space is classy and elegant, just like she is.

He finds his way to the kitchen and goes to the cabinets to look for a glass. He feels only a little guilty for rooting through Diana’s belongings, but he knows the feeling of being parched all too well and doesn’t like reliving it. On his fourth try, he locates the glasses and pulls one down. The kitchen sink looms off to his right, taunting him and daring him to try it, even though it doesn’t look much like the sinks he remembers from his day. In 1918, the most experience he’d had with sink faucets was a single knob, and when you twisted it, water came out. Now in 2018, there are two knobs, and he’s not exactly sure what each of them does. He winds up picking a side and twisting it, letting the water fill the glass.

For a lesser man, this situation would be impossible to comprehend. Steve knows he’s lucky in that he had a brief introduction to the bizarre and seemingly impossible when he’d first come across Themyscira and Diana herself, but even with that under his belt, he still has trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that he’s 100 years in the future. Just yesterday, he’d been clad in a uniform as he’d fought by Diana’s side, but today he’s in a world where bananas taste different, and Diana’s harder to read. It’s a sinking feeling that comes when realizing you haven’t changed at all, but the other has changed greatly, Steve thinks to himself. And he knows he’s going to discover new changes about Diana the longer he’s around her, and he’s not sure how ready he feels to take it all on.

If Diana has changed, and he hasn’t, then what will he do if this new Diana doesn’t want him? He feels ridiculous for thinking about something so silly as “does the girl like me back,” but he can’t help the thought haunting the cynical shadows of his brain. Because of Diana, he’d found hope in humanity again, something he hadn’t had for a damn long time after all of the things he’d seen. Because of her, he’d come to look at life as a gift and not a burden. So if Diana’s feelings have changed, then what does that say about him?

Rubbing his eyes, Steve shakes his head and sighs under his breath. He keeps feeling like he’s drifting through a dream, but he isn’t. God knows he certainly isn’t ungrateful for having lived through the explosion he’d accepted as the reason for his death, but adjusting to 2018 will be a hell of a mission he never would’ve thought he should plan for. But he’s a soldier, and so like a soldier, he will carry on.

He takes his glass into the living area of Diana’s apartment and finds her bookshelf. All kinds of topics from cooking Caribbean food to the history of preservation techniques to Kurt Vonnegut line her shelves, and he takes a while to peruse her reading tastes. As it turns out, she likes a little bit of everything, which doesn’t surprise him any more than the news of her job at the Louvre does. He finishes skimming the titles and finally chooses a nonfiction book on chemical warfare that looks like it might help him catch up on a topic he’s already a little familiar with. He sits down on the couch and opens up to the first page.

* * *

Diana dreams in fire. Lethal and languid like a snake, the flames slither around her and consume her, and yet she feels no pain. She looks down and sees her skin burning off in sickening, smoky curls, but she feels nothing. Even when she opens her mouth to scream, her voice abandons her. Faces of those she’s lost over the years to fire appear in front of her, but no matter how hard she reaches to save them, she cannot move.

Suddenly, her mother’s face appears before her, and Diana no longer burns. She sits on her childhood bed and watches how her mother’s eyes light up as she tells Diana stories, the hearth nearby warming her beneath her furs. She feels like a child again, and as she scoots closer to her mother, she realizes that she _is_ a child again. As Hippolyta puts her cool smooth hand against Diana’s cheek, she remembers what it’s like to have a mother.

“Mother, are you proud of me?” she hears herself ask. Her voice is light and delightful, truly a child’s voice, especially with the desperate tone that begs for her mother’s approval so obviously heard. “I saved the world, Mother. Mankind is good again. Are you proud of me?”

Hippolyta’s face fills with sorrow, and her hand grows colder. “I told you they don’t deserve you. And you left. You left your people for them.”

“Mother…Mother, no!” Diana cries out. “Mother, please! Please!”

But Diana doesn’t get to hear her mother’s reply. She jerks awake from the dream and is greeted by the sight of her ceiling fan above her. As much as she’d like to think that her demigoddess status makes her exempt from nightmares, she knows that denying the reality of her nightmares would be foolish. Closing her eyes again, she covers her closed lids with her hand and tries to catch her breath. Fire. Always fire. Her first memory of anything related to do with the world of man has to do with fire, with the furious flames that spurted from the back of Steve’s plane as it fell gracelessly from the sky.

Steve.

Diana’s eyes shoot open, and she quickly peeks at the floor to check on him. He isn’t there. Panic fills Diana’s throat, and she blinks the fiery feeling that’s starting to gather behind her eyes.

“No, no, no,” she whispers and tumbles out of her bed. “No. You were not a dream. I know what I saw.”

Wild and unfettered, she hurries out of her room and into the hall. “Steve? Steve? Steve Trevor, are you here?”

“Diana? Diana, I’m in here,” Steve’s voice floats back to her. She barely waits to hear the rest of his reply, and she takes off to the living room where Steve sits neatly on the couch with a book in his hands. He’s got on the same clothes he had on the night before, and his eyes look a little tired and bloodshot, but otherwise, he appears to be in one piece. Taking the sight of her in, Steve’s expression turns to confusion and then to worry. “Diana? Is everything all right? Are you ok?”

Diana doesn’t speak, but she goes to him and sits on the couch beside him. She bites her lip to try to take her mind off of the sickening fear that’s now starting to trickle out of her heart as it dissipates. “I thought…I couldn’t find you…I couldn’t…”

The meaning behind her words strikes Steve, and realization breaks over his face the way waves break over a shore, harsh and quick. “Diana, no. No, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize…God, I didn’t think about that. Diana…I didn’t mean to worry you. Please, I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head and swallows, reaching out then to put her hand on his face. Remembering her dream of her mother caressing her face, she mirrors the motion against Steve’s cheek. She hasn’t seen him with stubble before, but now she sees clearly enough to tell that he could probably use a shave. But he’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful she can’t breathe or think about what it’s like to breathe. She just thinks he’s beautiful.

Without speaking, she leans forward, and he turns to face her a bit more until her forehead rests in the solid space where his neck meets his shoulder in a strong slope of spotless skin covered by black cotton. His arms fold around her, and suddenly, they’re sitting together in a way that’s far more intimate than they ever have before. They’ve been more than just intimate with each other—they both know that that ship sailed all the back during that one night in Veld—but there’s something different about how they’re together now. Before, they’d had to rush any moments alone together as they had no idea when or if they’d get a chance to be alone again. Diana knows she could’ve taken days just exploring Steve’s physical being just with her eyes and her hands, let alone her body itself.

But now there’s a patience that exists in the warm buzzing spaces of their bodies. She doesn’t read into it, doesn’t try to understand it, but she allows herself to loosen the Amazon-strength grip she keeps around her heart so she can enjoy it. Slowly, the worry and the anxiety that had coursed through every nerve beneath her skin drains out of her and away from her. Steve doesn’t speak, but he supports her and holds her as close as he can.

“I’m sorry,” Steve repeats in a murmur against her hair. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I’m usually a little more put together than this,” she says and tries to laugh. “It’s just that when I woke up, and you weren’t there anymore…when you’ve fought as many people with powers who use them for bad instead of good as I have, the fear sticks with you.”

“Have you fought people who could actually do something like that? Make an illusion?” Steve asks, still keeping his arms around her.

She nods against his shoulder. “There are very powerful people out in the world now. People who are hungry for things they shouldn’t be, and they’ll use their power to get it in any way, shape, or form.”

“Jesus,” Steve mutters under his breath. “Well…I can promise you that I’m actually here. Had some trouble staying asleep and didn’t want to disturb you while you were sleeping, so I came out here. Figured I could make myself useful by reading up on what I’ve missed over the years.”

At that, Diana pulls back from him, though reluctant to do so, and she looks at the book resting on the couch beside him. “You’re reading about Bruce Wayne?”

Steve glances at the biography he’s been buried in for the past hour, and he nods. “Yeah. I got through most of this one book on modern chemical warfare, and I decided to take a quick break from it and pulled this one for some light but still educational reading.”

Diana’s face reflects her amusement, and she reaches around him to pick up the book and look at it herself. “You know, I haven’t even read this one. I got it when it first came out mainly to irritate Bruce, but I’ve been a little too busy to actually sit down with it.”

Steve watches her open the book to the spot where he’d left off, mark his place, and flip through a few pages. Every now and then, she stops to skim over a line or two, a passage that’s caught her interest, but after a handful of page turns, she closes the book and sets it on the coffee table in front of them.

“Any good?” he asks, to which she gives a small smile and shakes her head.

“I don’t know. Probably not. I’ve found it’s difficult to find a good and also accurate biography. Either they’re good because they’re filled with all kinds of made up rumors about their sex lives, or they’re accurate and very boring.” She looks at him again, her face going quiet as her eyes drink in his image. “You didn’t sleep well?”

“I think it’s from all the sleeping I’ve done since 1918 that’s ruining my sleeping schedule,” he quips, but Diana remains serious. Shrugging, he half-nods, half-shakes his head. “I got a little sleep, but I got too restless after a while.”

“I wish you’d woken me,” she says, looking at him with those large dark eyes of hers. Thank God that through all the changes she’s undergone during the past century, she didn’t lose that comforting warmth in her gaze, Steve thinks. She sits up a little straighter to bring back her usual composure. “I don’t know what help I could’ve given you, but I would’ve tried to help you as best as I could.”

Steve quiets then, not particularly surprised by the truth and pure sentiment in her words, but simply floored by how good her heart is. Ever since he’s known her— _it’s been 100 years, Trevor, not just a week the way you think is_ —she’s been nothing less than genuine in her kindness toward people, particularly those who don’t deserve her kindness.

“What are you thinking?” Diana asks, noticing the look on his face.

He tries to smile, but the corners of his lips don’t quite make the journey. “Just how good you are. It’s…honestly, it’s a little intimidating. But a good kind of intimidating. I like it.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not as good as you think I am, Steve. I’ve killed people, too.”

“In war,” he counters. “We all did back then.”

“So you believe the ends justify the means?” she asks. She doesn’t exactly mean the question as a challenge or a judgment—just a question, but Steve’s body language turns borderline defensive. He doesn’t pull away from her, nor does he avert his gaze, but his muscles are certainly tenser and not as relaxed as they’d been earlier.

“If killing means saving lives, then I think yeah, it does,” he says and licks his lips quickly as he thinks. “I don’t enjoy killing. I don’t think you do, either. For both of us, it’s a duty, and our duty is to making the world a little better in any way that we can. We just have different backgrounds and different ways of doing it.”

“Bruce is very against killing,” Diana says.

Steve frowns, not quite sure of the relevance of her statement. “I would think most everyone who’s ever been in a war or does the kind of very specific job the two of you do is against killing.”

Diana amends her comment. “No, I mean Bruce will not kill at all. The whole reason he started being Batman was because he saw both of his parents murdered right in front of his eyes when he was a child. His quest is to seek justice but not through killing. In his eyes, killing a killer is becoming the kind of evil he seeks to eliminate.”

“But he knows about you, and he’s ok with it?” Steve asks.

She nods, sincere. “He understands that war is different. He doesn’t like killing, but he respects soldiers and their mission.”

“I can’t imagine he’d like _me_ too much,” Steve says as he gives a short, dry laugh.

Diana knows he’s killed people. Though she’s always thought of him as the best man she’s ever known, she’s never been under any illusions about who he was and what he’d had to do back during the War. She understands that what he had to do was part of a very different time period and had come from a place of duty and caring for others. Even though he’s killed people, she understands that death during war is different from death due to vengeance, betrayal, or even for the sheer pleasure of it is different. If she were to blame him for the lives he’s taken, she would only be a hypocrite, and she knows it.

“Bruce doesn’t like many people to begin with,” she finally says. “But he would never judge you for doing your duty as a soldier. We all have different parts to play, and for you, yours was the soldier. For him, it’s the vigilante.”

“And what’s my role now?” Steve asks her, studying her face as if she knows the answer to the world’s most hidden secrets. “I _was_ the soldier. But who am I now? What am I supposed to do?”

Diana presses her lips together in a thin line of concentration, and she tilts her head to the side as she studies him in return. “That’s something you get to define for yourself, Steve. No one’s telling you what to do and when to do it. No one’s giving you rules you’re supposed to follow.”

Steve knows she’s right, but he wishes the answer were easier than that. The corner of his mouth quirks up into a mischievous hint of a smile. “I’ve never been one to get hung up on rules.”

“Oh, I remember,” Diana laughs. This time her laugh and her smile are genuine, and Steve is once again struck by her ethereal beauty. Whenever he catches himself staring at her, he feels like an absolute ass because he knows men stare at her all the time, and he doesn’t like being grouped in with the majority of those monkeys, but God, if he can’t help himself.

“You can’t point fingers,” he shoots back with a smile of his own. “Who was the one who left her island even after her mother told her not to? Disobeying a mother’s orders is worse.”

Diana covers her face, still laughing. “Alright! Alright, I didn’t say I’m a rule follower.”

“As long as you admit it.”

Diana’s laughter dies down gradually, and when she looks at him again, her face is gentle and open. “But in all seriousness, you’ll find your place here. I know it took me a long time to figure out how I fit into the world after you d—“ She stops herself before she mentions his death, but her meaning is evident and hangs in the air between them. Shaking her head, she looks down at her lap. “I was lost for a while. But I eventually found my place with the help of some friends I had at the time. And now it’s your turn, and you’re not alone, either.”

“I’m not,” he quietly agrees and lifts his hand to her face.

Instinctively, she leans into his touch. “I need to pay Amanda Waller a visit. I need to know how she got hold of you, why she did, and why she called Bruce in to pass you off to him. Knowing her, she wouldn’t do it out of the goodness of her heart.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve says, not asking.

“I think this needs to be a trip I make by myself. I don’t want her pulling any little tricks while you’re there with me.” She chews the inside of her lip and keeps looking at him. In reality, she knows they must look ridiculous with how much they continue to stare at each other, to touch each other. Yet she can’t bring herself to care because there’s nothing more she cares about than the steady, rhythmic feeling of his pulse.

“Diana.”

“I’m not going today,” she says as she sees his hesitant expression. “Today needs to be about teaching you how to use modern things like a Keurig and an iPad. I have a feeling you’ll love the Internet.”

“Internet. Right.” Steve feels a little deflated by her quick rejection, but he swallows the feeling down. Now isn’t the time to argue with her, especially since she isn’t going today, which will give him more time to get her used to the idea of him coming along with her. After all, he’s the subject at hand, and he’ll be damned if he lets people talk about things that have to do with him while he isn’t present. “Should we get started on that?”

She shakes her head. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Steve is confused.

“Not yet.”

“Then what?”

“I’d like to kiss you first.”

Steve blinks. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that can be arranged. I can do that.”

And when Diana smiles at him, he realizes he’s every bit the idiot he was when he’d first met her. All she has to do is smile, and he somehow manages to fall even more in love with her. He remembers telling her he loved her, and his statement still holds true. Even now, a former coma patient with no memories of how he survived a plane explosion, a confused and lost mess of an ex-soldier, he loves her.

Steve puts his other hand on her cheek so he’s holding her face in his hands, and he gently kisses her. Diana doesn’t make a sound as she returns the kiss, placing her hand on his chest to steady herself amidst the warm buzzing feeling that starts to fill her chest. She kisses him with the intent to learn him all over again, but she finds that her mouth seems to remember on its own how he likes to be kissed. Responding to her, he deepens the kiss, and Diana’s heart skips 100 beats all at once.

As she pulls back, she wonders if he can see the adoration she so clearly feels inside her for her. She’s a little bit breathless, and she wants more of him, but she doesn’t move as her gaze falls all over his face. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Steve murmurs back to her, curious as he sees her working something out in her head. “Diana?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I…I don’t know. I spent a long time trying to figure out if I did or not, but after the Philippines, I stopped thinking about it. And by the time the War came around, I _really_ wasn’t about to start wondering again,” he says honestly. “Why? Do you?”

“I was raised to believe in the Fates. No matter what we did, it was because the Fates had determined it and chosen it for us. When I was a child, I accepted that explanation because I never had any reason not to. Then you crashed on Themyscira, and I left, and I saw war for the first time in a way I never had before. I experienced loss in a way I never had before. Through it all, I discovered family I had never known, and then I killed that last connection I had to the girl who was the Amazon from the island. And then through all of that, here you are again when you’re supposed to be dead, and I can’t stop wondering if you’re here because the Fates said you would be or if you’re here because of…because of some other reason I haven’t realized yet.” 

“What are you leaning toward?” Steve asks, his voice softening.

“I don’t know,” she admits. She blinks several times and then takes a breath. “And that’s what scares me. I don’t have the answer—I only have questions and not even just one question but 1,000 questions.”

“The existential crisis,” Steve says wisely. “Maybe there’s a little more of mankind in you than you thought, Diana.”

She considers this for a few seconds. “I think maybe I picked up more than I’d realized, yes. But I think…whether it’s Fate or not, I know that you are a gift and a miracle, and I will never let anything happen to you again.”

Steve’s expression softens, and he removes a hand from her cheek to smooth it over her hair. “That’s a heavy promise.”

“But it’s one I intend to keep. A promise is unbreakable, Steve Trevor,” she says a little fiercely.

He takes her into a warm hug then, gently holding her against him as he remembers how much he’d wanted to hold her forever the last time he’d seen her. Tucking her head against him, her breathing evens out, and she relaxes in his arms.

“I know, Diana,” he whispers. “I know.”


	5. Answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to sumiandmiga, thesinfulship, Rex501st, and blainecarraway for commenting!
> 
> This chapter is really blending some of the comics universe, the DCEU, and my own creative license. I'm going off the maybe/maybe not part of the comics in claiming that ARGUS has been around since the Revolutionary War, and as of right now, they're not exactly a liaison for the Justice League. So ARGUS + how Steve relates to ARGUS in this fic are kind of a blend of everything right now.
> 
> I didn't get as much feedback as I have on the past few chapters, so I hope y'all still don't hate what's going on! Enjoy <3

It comes as no surprise to Diana that Steve is a quick study when it comes to technology. Considering his skill as an officer in the military, he’s always been good with weapons, strategy, and all of the other requirements it takes to do what he does. _Or did_ , Diana thinks, correcting herself. Now that he’s in 2018, Steve can no longer be a soldier, or at least not in the way he’s used to. She understands exactly what he means about trying to figure out how he fits into the world now, and as she teaches him how to use Google, make a cup of coffee with a Keurig, and send a text message, she’s reminded of just how smart he is, not that she’s ever doubted his intelligence. However, her memories of his quick, resourceful brain and then seeing that brain in action are two very different experiences, and she gets to watch him take the skills he’d had in 1918 and appropriately apply them to his real life situation in 2018.

At first, she’s so absorbed in teaching Steve how to save a document that she doesn’t notice her cell phone vibrating. In fact, she doesn’t notice it at all until she sees that Steve is distracted, and when she follows the path of his eyes, she sees the familiar glow of her cell phone screen lighting up. She gives Steve an apologetic glance as she reaches for it. “Sorry. This might be work.”

“No, no, don’t worry about me. I have more than enough to keep me busy here with…with this,” he replies and gestures vaguely at the laptop perched on his lap. Diana shoots him a quick smile and stands up so she can put a little bit of space between Steve and herself, just in case the caller is Bruce, and he says something Steve might not quite be ready for yet. As she walks toward the kitchen, she looks down at the screen and sees stark white letters jumping up and out at her: UNKNOWN CALLER.

The only time she ever gets an ID like this is when Bruce calls her about something related to the League, which is definitely a topic Diana doesn’t want to bring up with Steve right now, and she slides her thumb across the screen to answer. “Hello?”

“Miss Prince,” a voice that isn’t Bruce’s says on the other end. “How is Captain Trevor?”

Diana freezes, her heart sinking and her pulse rising. “Why are you calling me?”

“I turned him over to Bruce so that Bruce could, in return, turn him over to you. I think I deserve a chance to know how the good captain is. After all, he’s been in my custody for years now, and even though I’ve kept him on the back burner, I’m curious as to how he’s doing,” Amanda Waller replies in that cool, even way she has of making it clear she’s the one in control. “So. How is Captain Trevor?”

“No. I get to ask some questions first,” Diana says, struggling hard to keep the anger out of her voice. “Why did you have him in the first place?”

“Miss Prince, your cell phone isn’t exactly the most secure of lines, and so I’d prefer not to discuss such an intricate matter with you over the phone.”

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“No need. I’m still in Gotham. I can come by your apartment, and we’ll talk then. I’d love to see Captain Trevor for myself. Quite an anomaly he is. Did Bruce tell you about the blood? That’s been something my biochem team can’t figure out.”

Diana’s temper flashes, and her free hand clenches into a tight fist. “I don’t want you coming to my apartment. Not while he’s here. I don’t want you around him.”

“You may have forgotten, Miss Prince, but when Captain Trevor woke up, yours was not the first face he saw. Mine was. And if I hadn’t offered him to Bruce Wayne, you wouldn’t even know he was alive, let alone awake right now. If you want answers, you’ll get answers, and in order to get those answers, I’m going to need to come see you in person. You _and_ Captain Trevor,” Waller says, the shift of tone from even to pointed evident in her voice. Diana detects a threat buried down somewhere beneath all of the formality, but she doesn’t address it, though it kills her not to. “So. May I expect to see you sometime today?”

Diana grits her teeth and swallows down the initial retort that comes to mind. “Yes.”

“Excellent. I’ll see you soon, Miss Prince.”

Without waiting another moment, Diana ends the call with Waller and goes stalking back into the living room. Steve still works at something on the laptop, his eyebrows knit together in concentration as he messes around with the keyboard. He detects her presence and glances up, then back down, then up again when he sees the strained expression on her face. “Diana? What is it?”

“Amanda Waller is coming here,” she says, short and clipped. “I don’t know what time she’s going to be here, but she said she has answers, and she wants to see the both of us in person.”

“Ok…well…that’s not too bad,” Steve tries, only to be cut off by the slicing burn of Diana’s eyes.

“Nothing good ever comes from business with that woman,” she says fiercely. “She’s hungry for power and uses and manipulates people to get them to do what she wants. Handing you over to Bruce wasn’t something she did because she’s got a caring, loving heart. Whatever made her do it, there’s something in it for her, and I don’t know what.”

Steve’s mouth twists a little, and he appears to be holding back from saying something, but then he exhales, overwhelmed and confused. “Right. Right. So she’s coming over here to see what’s going on, but she’s going to answer questions. That part’s good, at least. I have a thousand questions, and I don’t think I’m the only one.”

“There’s nothing good that can come from a deal with her,” Diana repeats. “You haven’t seen the kind of destruction she brings.”

Steve’s face takes on that look like he’s holding something back again, and he carefully shuts the laptop before setting it off to the side. “I don’t doubt that. I’ve barely even been awake in the world for 24 hours, so no, I have absolutely no idea the kind of power this lady has, but…I’m a little lost here.”

“What? What’s wrong?” she asks, borderline demands due to the force of her anger at Amanda Waller.

“Just…I remember you talking about how mankind is good and wise, strong and passionate…however the list went. I very distinctly remember you explaining to me that humans are good at heart, and I guess I’m just trying to wrap my mind around all of this,” Steve replies. He sees Diana’s eyes flash, and he inwardly cringes, suspecting it’s directed toward him. “I don’t mean to insult you. I’m…it’s…it’s a different side of you. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t remember you being quite so adamant about a human being a bad person.”

Suddenly, the anger in Diana’s eyes, and she looks hurt, which Steve realizes is a lot worse to witness than her anger. She blinks a couple of times and looks down a little as she processes his observation and considers it. “Steve…so many things have changed over the years. I can’t begin to tell you all of them. Even just from what I’ve told you, I barely scratched the surface. _Barely_. People rarely use horses as a way to travel because now we have cars. Air conditioning and motion detector toilets and tiny computers we can take with us everywhere in our pockets so we are never out of reach. But people have changed over the years, too. _I_ have changed. So the girl you knew on Themyscira—she believed that killing the God of War would end war forever. So you can only imagine my surprise when the 1930s came around, and war broke out again across the world. For a while, I thought that Ares was alive again, but I knew—I _felt_ in my heart that he was really and truly dead. People fought because they chose to.” She takes a breath and folds her arms over her chest in a protective stance. “When you died, realizing that mankind has the choice to be who they are was the most difficult thing for me. You’d made the choice to save the world by sacrificing yourself, and so to see people making choices that were anything but…maybe I’ve become a little cynical. Maybe I’ve seen a little too much. I don’t know. But I do know that I’ve seen too many humans make choices that disgrace those made by truly good humans like you. Amanda Waller is one of the former. She could decide to be good and wise, strong and passionate, but she’s handpicked which of those she wants to be, and I don’t see her changing her priorities anytime soon.”

Diana goes quiet then, trying to even out her breaths as she slowly inhales and exhales. Her chest aches in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time, and she unconsciously rubs her palm against her sternum as if she has the capability of rubbing out the pain. Steve gets off the couch and crosses over to her, but she doesn’t look at him—she can’t look at him.

“Diana,” he says softly when he’s standing directly in front of her. “Diana. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for any more than I had them the night you killed Ludendorff. Even if I live to be 2,000 years old, I don’t think I’ll ever find those answers, and that’s something I’m going to have to eventually make peace with. I wish I could tell you that there’s some kind of magic spell you could chant that would fix the world and everything wrong in it, but if that spell exists, I sure as hell don’t know about it. God knows I wish I could make everything bad go away. But as long as there are people like in this world, then there’s still some hope left to be had. You know who taught me that?”

Diana looks at him with those soft brown eyes that had captured his heart on the beach, and then she looks down again. “Me?”

He laughs quietly and nods. “Yes. You. When I met you, I was so sure that everything was going to hell, and I was just slowing down the process by trying to stop it. The end is inevitable, I thought. And yeah, the end came. According to what you told me, though, the end that happened was the end of the War. Not the world. Diana, when I met you, I had nothing left to believe in or hope for. The only reason I kept going was because I couldn’t sit back. But you. You made me hope again. Have faith again.” He reaches out for her hand. “Do you have any idea how impossible that was?”

She looks at his hand for a few seconds, and then she takes it, finding comfort in the warm roughness of his palm. “You had it in you. You just needed to find it again.”

“And you helped me find it.”

“I’m not so sure I can inspire that in Amanda Waller.” She laces her fingers through his and notes the intimacy of the close handhold. “Waller, she’s…she isn’t evil. She doesn’t want to destroy the world for the sake of destroying it. Actually, I don’t think she wants to destroy the world at all.”

“Then?” Steve asks.

“I think she wants to make the world better, but she goes about it in ways that I consider to be shameful and despicable.”

“The ends justifying the means,” Steve says, calling to mind what Diana had asked him earlier.

Closing her eyes, Diana sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t…I don’t know. But I do know that she’s coming here sometime today, and I want to be prepared. Whenever she’s around, anything can happen, and I refuse to be caught with my guard down.”

Steve catches a glimpse of the Diana he’s familiar with, and he smiles. “You haven’t changed that much.”

She frowns. “I’ve changed a lot.”

“I don’t know about that. The fire you’ve got churning in your heart right now? That hasn’t changed a bit. That’s all you, Diana of Themyscira.”

Diana knows Steve’s trying to help, and she doesn’t want to make him feel like he’s failed, but he has no clue. Again, she can’t help but wonder what he’ll say, think, and do when he realizes she’s changed in ways that are more than he can handle. Steve is still Steve Trevor from 1918, and she’s Diana Prince of 2018. What if he doesn’t like the person she’s become?

Pushing the thoughts out of her head, she makes herself smile up at him, and she squeezes his hand a little. “I need to freshen up before Waller gets here. May I get you anything before I get in the shower?”

“Hmm? No. No, I’ll be fine. I’m still working with the…the computer. Laptop. Whatever it is,” he says and gestures with a tilt of his head toward the sleek computer still resting on the couch. “I know how to use a Keurig, and at this point, I think I’ve got a number of things on my plate.”

“Alright.” She leans up and kisses his cheek. “I’ll be out soon.”

“Alright.” He smiles at her, reluctant to let her hand go, though he does. The thought of Diana in the shower is terribly appealing to him, and he clears his throat to distract himself from the mental image, feeling a little guilty about it. Once she’s out, he should probably ask if it’s all right for him to take a shower, too, but until then, he’ll get back to work with the laptop. He has his mission for the time being, and he might as well get this one right, too.

* * *

Diana knows that Steve is safe in her living room while she’s gone. She knows this. However, she can’t stop doubting the reality of his presence. What will she do if this truly is one giant farce? What if this is Amanda Waller doing something to get under her skin? To provoke her?   If Amanda Waller is trying to provoke Diana, then she has no idea what kind of hellstorm she’s opened.

While the shower water warms up, Diana brings out her cell phone and calls Bruce. One ring barely finishes before his clipped voice answers. “Diana.”

“Hello to you, too,” she says drily.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Amanda Waller called me. She’s coming by sometime today to talk to me about Steve. Do you know anything about that?” Diana doesn’t expect Bruce to know, and even if he _did_ know, the chance he’d tell her rests at a solid 50/50.

“No,” Bruce coolly replies. “But it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been expecting this ever since she contacted me in the first place about Trevor.”

“She says she has answers, and she wants to see how Steve’s doing.”

“Sounds like a check in, but with Waller, nothing’s ever that simple and straightforward.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Diana closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing. “Do you have any idea at all why Steve might be valuable to her? Or why she’d hand him over to you in the first place?”

“I don’t.” He pauses. “You know if I had any remote hint of an inkling as to what her motive is, I’d tell you.”

“I know.” Diana sighs again. “I know. But I don’t know how to approach this, and I hate not knowing what to do.”

Bruce is silent. Despite the close kind of partnership— _friendship_ —that he and Diana have formed since the Doomsday battle, they’re not the type of friends who share things like feelings and insecurities with each other. Yes, he knows parts of Diana’s story, and she knows parts of his, but they’ve always kept each other at a slight distance, too aware of what happens when there’s no distance at all. Hearing Diana speak so candidly about not knowing what to do is strange, and he’s not entirely sure how to handle this new kind of vulnerability she’s letting him see.

“I know you do,” he says after a few moments, his voice quiet. “I hate not knowing her objective and how it could affect you.”

This time Diana is the one to quiet. She rests her head against the cool tile wall of her bathroom, silently savoring how nice it feels to soothe her heated skin. “I’ll figure it out. Thank you, Bruce.”

“I only wish I could be of more help.” Bruce sounds regretful.

“No, you’ve done so much. You’ve brought him back to me not just once but twice. I never thought I’d get any part of him.” Diana takes a shaky breath and squeezes her eyes shut even harder. She doesn’t view crying as a sign of weakness, but she will _not_ cry on the phone with Bruce Wayne. Exhaling, she opens her eyes again and steadies herself. “But you gave him to me twice. So. Thank you. Please know you’ve done the most.”

“Will you call me after Waller leaves?” Bruce asks after a brief pause, his voice a little gentler. “I want to know what she’s up to.”

“I’ll call you when I get the chance.”

“Alright. I’ll talk to you soon, Diana.”

“Talk to you soon, Bruce.” Diana ends the call and sets the phone on the counter of the bathroom sink. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t feel any better or any more reassured than she had before the call, but she does feel the tiniest bit more supported. Even if she and Bruce aren’t the most emotionally intimate of friends, she believes he has her back just as she has his. She tests the shower water’s temperature and, satisfied, starts to undress. As she climbs into the shower and beneath the warm steamy spray, she thinks that maybe having friends might not be so bad after all.

* * *

After a shower that’s long enough to make Diana feel guilty for being away so long, she manages to coax herself out and into the fresh change of clothes she’s brought into the bathroom with her. She briefly towel-dries her hair, ultimately deciding to leave it down to dry, and she walks out of the bathroom and into her bedroom.

She sees the figure on her bed right away. Diana’s warrior instinct kicks in, and her body starts to go on the defensive when she recognizes who it is.

“Before you jump down my throat, no, Captain Trevor hasn’t seen me yet,” Amanda Waller says blithely. “I let myself in.”

“You have no right to come into my home without the due respect of a guest toward a host.” Diana can’t keep the hostile tone out of her voice, nor does she spend a lot of effort in trying to. “I agreed to meet with you because I want to know what the meaning behind all of this is, not so you could gain secret access to my apartment.”

“So based off what you’re saying, then I’m the one doing you the favor, right?” Waller challenges. When Diana doesn’t reply, Waller nods, accepting her silence as acquiescence. “I paid my respects to you by not approaching Captain Trevor without your being present. Besides, I wanted a few moments to speak with you and just you, so I took my chance.”

Diana frowns, still not lowering her guard, especially as she notices the briefcase in Waller’s hand. “What do you want to speak with me about?”

“Captain Trevor’s realignment with the world. He’s not going to understand as much as you do. Not at first.”

“I’m well aware. To help with that, I’ve been teaching him how to use some modern technology. The sooner he gets caught up on everything he’s missed, the better.”

“So you know that the more he learns how to use the Internet, the more he’ll leave a digital trail behind, right? And the more he leaves that links history back to who he is now, the easier it’ll be for all kinds of people to find him. People who shouldn’t.”

Diana’s frown deepens, and she folds her arms over her chest, still defensive. “What are you saying? That people will come after him?”

“You know just as acutely as I do that there are all kinds of evils in this world, Miss Prince.” Amanda Waller looks hard at Diana in a way that makes Diana feel like they’re having a strange moment of bonding, built around a shared experience of evil intentions and bad people no one ever should’ve had to face. “If Bruce Wayne could figure out who you are as well as the other members of the League, then there’s someone just like him out there who’ll figure it out, and by finding your identity, they’ll find Steve’s.”

Diana’s jaw clenches as she realizes Amanda Waller is right. As much as she’d love to deny Waller’s claims and swear up and down that she’ll find a way to 100% guarantee Steve’s immunity from all the bad people in the world, she can’t. “Why does this sound like a threat?”

“It’s not a threat. Just…a warning. Captain Steve Trevor may be 100 years into the future, but that doesn’t mean that he’s completely lost to the past,” Waller replies.

A chill goes down Diana’s spine, and she feels every single muscle in her body grow even tenser as she imagines all of the ways she could take Waller out right here and right now, but she just nods in acknowledgement. “Warning received. Now. You’re here to see Steve and to give us answers.”

“As best as I can.”

Not wanting to let Waller out of her sight, Diana gestures to the bedroom door that leads out into the hall. “I’m confident you already know your way around my apartment here.”

Waller shows no reaction, not that Diana had expected her to, and she leads the way out to the living room where Steve is. Diana follows right behind her, eyes trained on her for the slightest sign of a threat, whether physical or not. She tries to ignore the pounding roar of her heart as it thuds in her chest, but her adrenaline is up, and every lesson she’s ever learned from Antiope on how to track prey, how to read an enemy, shouts out at her from the back of her brain.

“We have company,” Diana announces. Steve looks up and pauses as he sees Waller. His eyes flick over to Diana, and she meets his gaze, giving him a silent warning to be on guard. “Amanda Waller, Steve Trevor. Steve, Amanda Waller.”

“We’ve already met, if my memory serves correctly,” Steve says and starts to stand.

Waller puts her hand up. “No need to stand, Captain Trevor. I’ll sit.”

Steve glances at Diana again and then back to Waller. “So I’ve heard that you have answers about what’s going on with me.”

“Yes and no,” Amanda replies, and she takes a seat in one of the chairs across from the table. When she’s comfortable, she looks up at Diana as if she were inviting Diana to sit, too, but Diana holds steady and doesn’t move. “Alright. Just as a brief overview of who I am and what I do, I run a top-secret government organization called ARGUS: Advanced Research Group United Support. Basically all you need to know is that we’re a highly classified group of people with a highly classified set of skills. As a military man yourself, I’m sure you understand exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Right,” Steve says with a nod.

“Even before you died, you were important. Did you know that?” Waller asks calmly.

Steve frowns at her, glancing again at Diana as if to ask her what the hell is going on, and then he redirects his gaze back to Waller. “Is that a trick question?”

“Your files show that you were singled out as a potential agent for ARGUS.”

“Wait,” Steve says firmly and leans forward. “What? I would’ve known something about that. I wasn’t…no. I was a soldier. A pilot. I did what I needed to do when I needed to do it. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Steve? An ARGUS agent?” Diana adds, her frown deepening. “How long has ARGUS been around?”

“Almost as long as you, Miss Prince,” Waller wryly answers. “Not quite but long enough.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“It tells you that I’m telling the truth,” Waller shoots back. “Captain Trevor’s files from World War I are in the ARGUS database as he was going to be approached with the opportunity to become an agent.”

“No,” Diana says furiously and shakes her head. “No. Steve would never have been considered to be a part of your organization’s twisted views on how to best bring peace and hope—he would _not_ have been a good candidate for such despicable things you and ARGUS stand for.”

“Wait a minute,” Steve interjects. “I’m just…I’m not following you. You have files on me?”

“Yes.” Waller places the briefcase on her lap and opens it. Diana’s body tenses even more, and her eyes scrutinize the director’s movements while she pulls out a manila envelope. “This file contains the information ARGUS has on you. So while you were disobeying orders and going off to play hero, you never noticed that you were being monitored. After your plane exploded, an ARGUS operative went to retrieve your body, and that’s when you were found.”

Hearing that Steve had been found, Diana feels her stomach turn in such a way that she feels physically pained, and she has to fight back the nausea. If only she’d thought to look for him. If only she’d tried to find him. If only she’d believed and tried harder. If only she had had faith, she could have found him, and this realization hits her harder than any punch she’s received from a metahuman with enhanced powers.

“You’re telling me that ARGUS has had me…this entire time,” Steve says slowly, his incredulousness increasing with each word.

Waller nods, and it’s clear from the expression on her face that she isn’t lying. Holding the file out to Steve, she waits for him to take it. “Your brain took a very long time to knit itself back together. In the meantime, ARGUS kept you in one of its most highly classified locations and tended to your medical care.”

Looking at the file as if it were a snake, Steve takes it out of Waller’s hand and looks down at it. “And this is all the information ARGUS had on me at the time.”

“Yes,” Waller says simply. “You’ll recognize names of men you worked with who were also ARGUS agents.”

Diana looks away from the scene in front of her. She can’t look at it. If she looks, she’ll be acknowledging the fact that she could have found him. She could have saved him. Realistically, she doesn’t know how she could have brought him back to consciousness any sooner than ARGUS had, but she ignores the doubt yelling at her in her head. She could have saved the world, and she could have saved him, she thinks. Nausea seeps into her stomach, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t throw up right there in front of Steve and Waller.

“Why did ARGUS want him?” she forces herself to ask. “Why would they think he’s the kind of man they’d want for the job?”

“ARGUS has been fighting the good fight for a long time, Miss Prince.” Waller turns her sharp, steely eyes onto Diana, showing she isn’t afraid of the Amazonian princess the way others might be when feeling her anger directed toward them. “Originally, we started out as the Armed Revolutionaries Governing Under Secrecy during the Revolutionary War. A resistance team. A team who would do whatever it took to achieve the rights we deserved. And that ARGUS? That original ARGUS? It’s never gone away. Maybe there was a name change. Maybe some new tech was added to the mix. But Captain Trevor fit the mold perfectly.”

“No.” Diana shakes her head. “He didn’t.”

“A man who was known for disobeying orders? A man who was willing to disobey his superiors and risk death or a court martial because he needed to do what was right? Miss Prince, that’s the _perfect_ model of an ARGUS agent.”

“Is that what you still do?” Steve asks. He nods at Waller, still every bit as suspicious of her as he was just moments before, but now Diana picks up on a sense of curiosity lurking beneath his suspicion. “You still break all the rules in order to do what’s right?”

“No,” Diana says sharply.

“Yes,” Waller replies at the exact same moment. “That’s still our mission. However, a number of the official superheroes you see out and about on the streets today don’t exactly approve of our methods. Wonder Woman here included.”

“You put together a team of criminals and forced them to fight for you. And when they didn’t, you blew their heads off using a bomb that you _implanted in their skulls_.” Diana’s voice grows louder as her fury becomes more difficult to control. “There’s nothing honorable in that. Those people might be criminals of the worst kind who have done things worse than we can possibly imagine but—“

“Diana,” Steve interjects, his voice soft. She stops speaking and looks at him, looks at the pained expression he wears like a badge of shame. “It’s…it’s not that outrageous for them to consider me. I have combat training, education in strategic military maneuvers, and a history of going against my superior officers and doing dangerous things.”

“You’re not serious right now, are you?” Diana demands. Flinging a hand in Waller’s direction, she stares down at Steve with angry, molten eyes. “You wouldn’t dare sacrifice innocent lives—“

“My task force is not innocent, and you know it,” Waller interrupts. The tone of her voice conveys that she’s had this argument with Diana before, but judging by Diana’s fury, Waller has never convinced her of the squad’s validity.

“That is not the point,” Diana snaps. “You don’t get to decide who’s worthy to live and who isn’t.”

“And you are?” Waller counters back, not losing her cool for a second. “Isn’t that the whole driving force behind what you do? You’re deciding who the bad guys and who the good guys are. Well, I’m doing the same. My way is just more effective.”

“No.” Diana crosses the room and goes to look out the window. “No. _Your_ way is manipulative and cruel. What _I_ do saves lives without playing the part of Hades.”

“Your gods are dead, Diana.”

Suddenly, Diana whips around, pure fire in her eyes. “You don’t get to talk to me about my gods.”

“Diana.” Steve stands and walks toward her, file still in hand. “Hey. Hey.”

“And _you_ don’t get to talk to me like I’m being unreasonable.” She turns her fierce glare over to him and shakes her head.

Across the room, Waller clears her throat and stands. “Well. I believe my job here is done. Captain Trevor, if you have any more questions, my number is in that file. It’s to my direct personal line, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about the contents, ARGUS, or anything else.”

“Right. Thank you,” Steve mumbles. He doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful because he isn’t. If Waller’s telling the truth, and judging by Diana’s reaction, she at least seems to think it’s the truth, then he’ll have answers to what’s been going on with him. Everything still feels so recent to him that when he looks at the file, he feels a keen sense of betrayal from those he’d known who had secretly been ARGUS agents and hadn’t told him. He doesn’t even know their names yet, but he already feels that stab deep in his solar plexus.

“You’ll want to reboot your security system, Miss Prince,” Waller says. “I’ll show myself out.”

Diana doesn’t watch Waller leave. She’s far too angry to even muster up the politeness to tell the woman goodbye. As Waller exits the front door to the apartment, Diana’s all but shaking from the turmoil of emotions churning inside her. Steve looks back at Diana with a small, thoughtful frown on his face. “Diana? Why are you so angry?”

“She is not to be trusted.” Diana’s voice shakes, and she hates herself for it. “I know her, Steve. I _know_ her. She put _bombs_ in people’s heads and then detonated them if they didn’t follow her orders. Even if they’re criminals who probably should be dead, there’s no honor in saving the world that way. What she said about ARGUS wanting you as an agent…that can’t be true.”

“The file’s right here, Diana,” Steve says softly and lifts the manila envelope up between them so she’s reminded of it. “Everything ARGUS has on me is in here, and…as strange as it sounds…I think I believe Waller.” He sees the sharp flash of her eyes again, and he quickly speaks before she can react. “Hey. Hey. What does she have to gain by lying? Your trust? She clearly doesn’t have your trust, and I’m pretty sure she knows she’s never going to get it, even if she hand delivered me to your French doorstep. So what could she possibly gain from lying to you?”

“It’s her way of keeping one step ahead. She’s like that, Steve. Trust me.”

“I do,” he asserts, firm in tone and gaze. Finally, Diana looks up at him, and when he sees he has her attention, he sets the envelope on the small table by the windowsill. “Is that what’s really bothering you? I just haven’t seen you this angry over…well…anything. So is it really her that’s getting under your skin this much?”

The file draws Diana’s eyes to it, and she lets out an unsteady breath as she looks at it. So many answers inside. Just a couple of months ago, she would’ve given anything to learn more about Steve Trevor, the man she’d loved and lost. But now that she has the chance to learn about him via ARGUS’s assessment of him, she’s not sure she wants to take that chance. “I’m afraid of what that file says.” She swallows and forces herself to look him in the eye. “I’m afraid that when I read about why ARGUS thought you’d make a perfect agent, I’ll understand and agree. And if their assessment reads anything like what an assessment now would, then I’m afraid to see you fit that bill.”

Steve’s eyes crinkle as he frowns at her, slightly confused. “What? Why?”

“I only know ARGUS through all the bad things they’ve done. There’s a reason that they’re so classified, and it’s because if the general public knew about what they did and _how_ they did it, there’d be the biggest uproar we’ve possibly ever seen. I know that ultimately— _ultimately…_ ARGUS is the uglier side of government protection, and the reason it exists is because people who want the best for this country and this world believe the ends justify the means. And I just…I don’t know if I agree with that. I _certainly_ don’t agree with Amanda Waller’s squad. But ARGUS as a whole…”

Her face grows distant, and she shakes her head again. “I’m afraid to be wrong. If I’m wrong about this, then how will I ever know I’m right again? If I’m wrong about _you_ …”

Slowly, Steve puts his hand under her chin and guides her face back so he can see her straight on. Diana wants to look away, but she can’t—all she can do is look into Steve’s face and see that earnest look he’s wearing. With his other hand, he reaches and very gently puts it on her arm. “I only wish that I could be as good as you believe me to be. Ever since I met you, that’s what I’ve wanted to be. The kind of guy you saw in me.”

“You’re a good man, Steve Trevor.”

“I’ll keep trying until I can believe that for myself.” His voice is gentle despite the clear lack of belief he has in his own goodness. Running his thumb over her cheek, he drinks in the sight of her and smiles. “Whoever ARGUS believed me to be back then…who knows if it’s even right? I’m a spy. Remember how good I am at lying? Making people believe what I want them to believe? But…yeah, there’s also the chance that maybe they saw through all of that bravery and vigor I put on for the sake of patriotism, and they saw that I was the perfect guy to break the rules for them. Diana…if I had my choice, I’d be the guy you believed I was. I desperately, _desperately_ want to be that man.”

Diana bites the inside of her lip, and she puts her hand on top of his wrist, holding his hand in place as she holds his gaze. “You _are_ that man, Steve. You always have been. The goodness that’s inside you…” She puts her other hand on his chest. “I have faith in it, just as I have faith in you.”

Steve quietly laughs, staring at her in amazement. “You inspire me, Diana of Themyscira. You’re a wonder.”

At that, Diana remains sincere as she closes her eyes and says what she’s longed to say for 100 years.

“No. I just love you.”


	6. Loss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, morethanpixels, and goldendiana for commenting! <3
> 
> This chapter continues to mix a little bit of the comics universe and the DCEU. Dick Grayson makes a tiny cameo, and there's a brief mention of Damian. Since neither of them has been introduced into the DCEU yet ("yet" being the key word since Dickie G is getting his movie soon), I won't focus on them too much when it comes to this fic, but I did want to give a tiny nod to these characters as they're a couple of my favorites from the comics. Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you don't read comics, you don't have to worry about either of them becoming huge characters in this fic and not really knowing who they are!
> 
> I hope y'all are still liking this! I try to act classy and pretend like I'm not a slut for comments but alas...I am. Nonetheless, here's the new chapter, and I hope y'all enjoy! :)

Diana stops breathing. She’s never told Steve that she loves him. It’s not that she’s been consciously avoiding telling him, especially when she knows that he feels the same way, but she’s surprised to discover that saying the words to him brings back old emotions she’s tried to keep buried for the past century. Telling him she loves him is a reminder of the night he’d died—or hadn’t died, she’s not really sure what to make of it at this point—and how he’d said it to her, how she hadn’t said it back. For years, she’s hated herself for not having said it back to him so he could have died knowing that he was loved and cherished.

“Wow,” Steve breathes quietly. “Did I dream that?”

Diana’s face turns a little pink, and she shakes her head. “No.”

“So you really do?”

“Love you? Yes.”

Steve turns a little bashful then, and he smiles as he looks down at the floor. “Wow.”

“…is that ok?” Diana asks, to which Steve looks up and smiles so brightly she almost feels blinded by the warm sunniness of it.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’s perfectly ok. Why wouldn’t it be ok? I just…I’m enjoying the moment, alright?” he says, sputtering a little.

“Oh, well, don’t let me stop you from enjoying the moment.” She holds up her hands as if she’s surrendering to one of her foes. “Enjoy the moment all you want.”

“Believe me when I say I am.”

Diana’s smile fades a hair, and her eyes drift over to the manila envelope that has all the details of Steve’s pre-involvement with ARGUS. If it can even be called involvement at all, considering that he’d had no idea that ARGUS existed, let alone that they had their eye on him to become an agent. “I only regret I didn’t say it to you sooner. The night you left.”

“So what’s basically last week in my mind,” Steve clarifies.

Diana nods. “When you said it to me, I should’ve said it back. I didn’t know what was going on or what you were doing, and I didn’t realize it until I saw the plane climbing higher and higher into the clouds. Then the explosion.” She stops talking. She can’t talk about it any further. “Anyway. Your file. Are you going to read it?”

“You remember? The explosion?” Steve can’t help asking—he’s curious, and the look on her face speaks volumes.

“I can’t forget it.” Her mouth twists a little, a telltale sign of unhappiness. “And trust me when I say I’ve tried to.”

Guilt floods Steve’s chest until he feels he could drown in it, and he hates not knowing how to fix everything for her. More than anything, he longs to tell her he’s sorry. He’s sorry he had to leave her. He’s sorry he had to hurt her. He’s sorry she had to watch him die. He wants to tell her all the things he’s sorry for, including everything in the past, but he can’t muster up the courage to do so. Admitting he’s sorry is like telling her he’s messed up, and if he admits he messed up, then what will everything have been for?

“I wish you hadn’t seen it,” he finally says, truthful at last. “I don’t remember the explosion itself or much of the moments leading up to it, but I remember running to the plane knowing what I was going to do once I got it up. After that…I don’t remember what happened. But I do remember wishing you’d be so wrapped up in fighting Ares that you wouldn’t see me die.”

She lowers her eyes and swallows hard. “I saw everything.”

“Jesus,” he mutters, looking pained, and sets the file down to hold his hands out to her. Silent, she lifts her eyes and looks at him, and he puts both hands on either side of her face. Diana remembers the first time he touched her face like this, how gentle but strong his hands had been. Even now, she loves his hands and hasn’t been able to get enough out of touching and holding them. In 1918, she hadn’t understood the significance of holding another person’s hand, and she’d tried to hold his, not fully comprehending what “together” meant in the way he’d referred to it. But she’d noticed his hands and had maybe fallen a little in love with them right there.

Then in Veld he’d fought with every inch of his body. His legs carried him across No Man’s Land. His arms lifted his gun. His hands clutched it expertly, and his finger pulled the trigger. Diana doesn’t know how many people he’s killed in his lifetime, and she doesn’t want to know. Even though she can’t predict the future, she’s certain she’ll never want to know, just as she’s certain he’ll never want to know the same for her. In Veld, she’d fallen a little bit further in love with him as she’d watched him fight. He’d exhibited everything she admired in a person: strength, determination, passion, and a sense of duty to do what was right. His hands had held his gun and guided him, and as she’d watched him, she had realized she loved him.

As she looks at him now, she realizes she’s somehow managed to love him even more than she had then, and she relishes the feeling of his hands on her face again. His touch is like poetry, the gentle brush of his fingers a whisper of comfort. She’s grieved his death for years—far more years than she’d like to remember. And as he touches her with sonnets in his fingertips, she feels her heart break with all the anguish and grief she’s kept locked inside.

“Diana,” he says softly, whispers those quiet liquid syllables like he can’t say her name enough.

“I love you,” she says then, making herself look up into his eyes. “I loved you when I watched you board that plane, and I love you now.”

Steve leans his forehead against hers and closes his eyes. “God. I think I’ve loved you since I first opened my eyes on that beach and saw you beaming down at me.”

“You believe in love at first sight?” she asks, a little surprised to hear this from the man who had spoken about love and marriage in such an impersonal and detached way.

“No,” he honestly replies. “But I believe in you.”

She can’t not kiss him when he says that, and she wraps her arms around his neck in such a way that coveys she needs this closeness from him. He moves his hands away from her face and down to her waist to draw her closer, pulling her in protectively. Diana kisses him again and again, her need for confirmation that he’s alive getting stronger.

Suddenly, she pulls back from him, breathless and eyes a little glassy. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

He frowns as he processes what she’s just said, and then he shakes his head. “What? What, no. Why would you think you owe me an apology for that?”

“I didn’t even think to look for you. I didn’t think to stop you from going up in that plane. Steve…I could’ve done it, and I’m sorry…” She trails off, losing her wind the same way Steve had lost his when he’d made his decision to die.

“No. You don’t get to apologize for that because there’s nothing you could have done. Do you hear me, Diana?” He moves back farther so he can really look at her face. “I made the choice. That decision was for _me_ to make. Not you. I knew the outcome, but I chose to get in that plane knowing there was only one way that scenario was going to end. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Diana bites the inside of her lip, nodding to show she’s listening, even though she feels a huge sense of guilt eating away at her heart inside. “I’m always going to blame myself. For not doing better, not being better.”

“Diana, hey. Where did this self-doubt come from?” Steve frowns. “I don’t remember you doubting yourself ever.”

“It’s not doubt,” she argues. “It’s this feeling I have that tells me I should have done more.

It’s then that Steve understands what she’s trying to communicate, and he takes one hand off her waist to sweetly touch her cheekbone. He of all people knows what it’s like to feel that he should have done more. “Well, I’m here. And I’m alive and somehow in one piece so. That doesn’t exactly reek of failure to me.”

“I still wish I’d told you I loved you before you went on the plane.”

“Oh, angel,” he says, the sweetest smile in the world passing over his lips. “I already knew.”

She can’t help kissing him again, and if she didn’t have business to take care of, she has no doubt that she could stay here all day kissing him and doing nothing else. But she has a task to complete for the day, and so she reluctantly pulls away from him, her face drawn with the disappointment of no longer having his warmth right against her skin. “I have to go talk to Bruce.”

“Hmm?” Steve isn’t quite listening as he stares at her face.

“Bruce. I have to go see Bruce. He needs to know what’s going on with Amanda Waller.”

“Can’t you call him?”

“I could, but I’m not completely certain that she doesn’t have my apartment bugged somehow. If she was able to get past my security system, then she’s probably figured out how to bug me. One place she can’t bug is Bruce’s house, so I know it’s safe there.” She looks up into his beautiful blue eyes, silently marveling for the thousandth time how it’s possible for a human man to have eyes so stunningly blue like the waters of Themyscira. Despite herself, she steals another kiss.

“And you have secret things you want to discuss with him?”

“Things that I don’t want to discuss here where there could be ears about,” she says gently. Looking at the file, she nods toward it. “Are you going to read it?”

“Of course.” Steve lets go of her, looking every bit as reluctant as she does, and he picks it up with far less suspicion on his face than Diana would like to see. “This file has pieces of my life in here. Whatever ARGUS saw in me…whatever they wanted to do with me, I need to know. I know you think it’s a bad idea, Diana, but what would you do if you were in my situation?”

She hates being put on the spot like this because she knows that she’d do the same thing, but she can’t lie to him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything. If you were me, and you had the chance to see what a maybe evil organization had been planning on doing with you, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“Yes,” she answers and folds her arms over her chest, going protective again. “I would want to know what was in the file and why they wanted me.”

“So it’s the same thing.”

“Right.”

“Are you angry?”

“No,” Diana replies, sincere as she continues to eye the file in his hands. “I’m not happy, but I understand why you need answers. More than anything, I think I’m angry with ARGUS for doing this to you. Also, I’m angry with Amanda Waller for keeping it a secret for so long.”

“Isn’t that her signature call?” Steve flips the file open to the first page. “Keeping things secret? Manipulating people? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes,” Diana admits again, and she heaves a tired sigh. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t still get angry when I discover what it is she’s done.” Steve’s listening, but he’s more absorbed in reading, and so she puts her had on his wrist. “I’m going to give you time with that, ok? I need to stop by Bruce’s for a little while and tell him about this incident with Waller.”

“You don’t want to know what’s in here?” He holds the file up a little higher as if there were even the slightest bit of doubt as to what “here” refers to.

“That’s yours, Steve.” She can’t help reaching over and touching his face. “It needs to be for your eyes now. If you want to share its contents later, I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me, but for now, I think it’s best you take your time with it. Is that all right?”

Steve understands then, and he nods, grateful to her. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

“Will you be ok here?”

“Of course I’ll be ok,” he says, almost bristling, which makes Diana smile.

“Let me show you how to use the phone, and I’ll leave you my phone number so you can call me on this.” She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and holds it up. “We need to get you your own phone before we introduce you to the world of texting.”

He squints his eyes at her, lost. “Texting?”

She laughs and leans forward to kiss him on the bridge of his nose. “One thing at a time, Steve.”

* * *

Bruce knows Diana’s at the Manor before she even drives past the gates. Due to his obsessive need to know what’s going on at all times, he has all kinds of surveillance around the property and is thus alerted before Diana punches in her personalized access code to the front gate. “Dick, I’ll have to call you later.”

“Got bat stuff?” Dick asks on the other line.

“Mm. Diana’s here.”

“Diana? Tell her hey for me.”

“Mm,” Bruce grunts again.

“And I’ll tell Babs you say hey, too.”

“Mm.” Bruce hangs up from his older son and leans forward in his chair, typing furiously to bring up the results of all the tests he’s done so far on Steve. Much to his surprise, everything is normal. The only thing that’s different with Steve Trevor’s biology is the strange element that’s bound itself to his cells, but other than that, Steve Trevor is in 100% perfect health. Yet Bruce can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. He doesn’t know what it is or if it even has to do with biological health, but something about this entire situation feels wrong to him, and he hates not being able to identify the problem.

“Bruce,” Diana says, making her way into the part of the cave where he is. “I let myself in.”

“Oh, you did?” he asks and turns his chair to face her. “Huh. Maybe I should hire a new security team.”

“Don’t be coy,” she replies, but he catches a hint of smirk dart across her mouth. “I’m here on official business.”

“A donation to The Louvre? Done.”

“No. Amanda Waller.”

He raises his eyebrows. “So. Does that mean she made her stop by your place?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she say?”

Diana pulls one of the extra chairs over and sits down. “ARGUS has had Steve this entire time. After the plane exploded, they went to retrieve his body, found him alive, and maintained his medical care throughout the years until he woke up.”

Bruce frowns. “Why did ARGUS have him for so long?”

“Apparently, they had their eye on him and wanted to turn him into one of their operatives.” Diana sighs and rubs at her forehead as if she can simply rub a headache away. “Waller brought by a file that ARGUS has on Steve. It has all the information on his case. Who was watching him, what qualifications he met, I guess…things like that.”

“You haven’t looked at it?”

Diana gives him a hard look. “That file isn’t mine to look at. It’s Steve’s. If he wants me to know the contents of it, he’ll tell me, but he needs to have something that belongs to him and only him right now. The only thing I can give him is the information it contains, and even then, I wasn’t the one to give it to him.”

“Don’t you think there’s important information in there you should be aware of?” Bruce presses.

“Not all of us feel the need to invade others’ privacy,” Diana snaps. She pauses, looking surprised by her own outburst, and then she sighs and rubs her forehead again. “I’m sorry. That was unkind of me.”

“You’re under a lot of stress right now,” Bruce says by way of graciously accepting her apology. “You’ve received the shock of a lifetime which most people will never have to face in their entire lives.”

“It’s still no excuse to take it out on you.” She folds her arms over her chest and meets his gaze. “Anyway. ARGUS wanted Steve to work for them. According to Waller, several of the men Steve knew and personally worked with were ARGUS agents.”

“She’s going to try to recruit Trevor for ARGUS now,” Bruce says. Diana’s eyes narrow, and she starts to protest but can’t bring it in herself to.

“That…is something I’ve considered, though I haven’t wanted to.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration clouds Diana’s face, and she holds herself even more protectively. “I can’t tell him what to do, but I don’t trust Amanda Waller.”

“Neither do I. She’s playing some kind of a game here that isn’t going to be as easy as a simple exchange of favors.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Diana admits. “I don’t know her motive behind any of this.”

“Where’s Trevor now?” Bruce asks.

“Back at my apartment. I got him started on the Internet and Microsoft Word, so he’s working on typing and how to use Google.” Diana laughs a little and shakes her head. “I never thought I’d ever be in a position where I’d say that Steve Trevor, my former love, is in my apartment learning how to use a laptop.”

“So you love him still,” Bruce says, a statement rather than a question.

“I do.” Diana’s voice grows softer, and she doesn’t look away from Bruce. “Just because he died doesn’t mean I stopped loving him. I just…I learned how to move on and live without him. There’s a difference.”

“But you’ve been with people since him. Just a few months ago, you were sleeping with the lawyer vigilante.”

“Her name is Kate,” Diana says with a pointed look in her eyes. “Kate or Manhunter. And whom I’m intimate with and when I’m intimate with them is none of your business. Surely you don’t believe that love ends in death, Bruce.”

“A century is a long time to love someone who can no longer love you back,” Bruce counters. Diana’s jaw tightens, and her body language becomes even more protective as she tightens how she holds her arms over her chest.

“Then I suppose the joke is on both of us. Steve’s alive,” she says back. She knows she’s being far testier than normal, and she doesn’t like feeling this way, let alone acting on these feelings, but she’s so on edge with worry and apprehension. Like Bruce, she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and waiting has never been something she’s excelled at. Even as a child, she’d been chastised for her impatience, her desire to rush forward and take what she wanted. “Why does this matter to you, anyway? You didn’t approve of my being with Kate, and now you don’t approve of my being with Steve.”

“I never said I don’t approve,” Bruce says smoothly, not even batting an eyelash.

“Bruce. You’re not the only one who can read people. You might be Batman, but I’ve been in this world far longer than you have,” she points out. Finally, Bruce has to smile a little as he acknowledges the truth behind her statement with a little shrug.

“Alright, Princess.” He leans back in his chair and surveys Diana, who returns his gaze with just as much steadiness. “I’m simply worried that your feelings for Trevor will override your objectivity, especially for League related matters.”

Diana’s mouth twists to the side, and she gives him a hard look. “You’re not seriously asking me if my feelings are going to be a problem in the field, right? Suffering Sappho, Bruce. Would you ask Barry the same question? Clark?”

“Barry and Clark haven’t reunited with loves who they previously thought were dead for 100 years, Diana. You know me better than to accuse me of doing you the disservice of doubting your position of strength due to emotional feelings.”

“But you’re doubting my position now.”

“No.” Bruce leans forward then and rests his elbows on his knees. “Diana, out of everyone in the League, I trust your opinions and your ethics the best. Out of all of us, you’ve been around the longest, and you’ve seen the worst that people can be, but you still fight for everyone. Part of your resolve comes from Trevor’s death—you’ve even admitted that the reason you didn’t kill Maru was because you realized what Trevor’s last words and what they meant to you. Right?”

“Right,” she says, not liking where he’s going with this.

“My concern is that now his presence can and will be used against you.”

“The only person who knows about Steve is you. And now Amanda Waller.” Diana’s frown deepens, partly because the situation bothers her deeply but also because Bruce has a point. “I’ve thought about Waller using him against me, and I have no doubt she would, but I don’t think this is quite her game.”

“I just think you should be careful.” Bruce sits upright and looks closely at her. Despite his best intentions, Diana’s irritation with him is clear. They’ve had many moments before where they’ve fought over calls they didn’t agree with, choices that they felt needed to be avoided, and anything along the lines of what was the best way to protect the world. But this level of irritation comes from a place deeper inside Diana than she lets anyone go, and he knows that if he oversteps his boundaries, she’ll make sure to shut herself off from him and never let him close again.

“I’m being careful, Bruce. I promise. Remember, I’m much older and wiser than you.” She cracks a tiny smile at him, and she closes her eyes, rubbing them with the back of her hands. Part of the perks of being an Amazon includes never aging, and along with that, never feeling as though she’s aging. However, today is one of those days where she feels like she’s seen far more than any movie ever could have shown her. She pictures her bones crumbling down to ash so fine it’s as soft as silk, her muscles shriveling, and her skin cracking and peeling until it all falls off and clatters onto the floor like an empty pod. Today, she feels ancient.

“I know you’ll do what’s best,” Bruce replies, and Diana’s not sure he’s fully convinced that she won’t let her feelings for Steve compromise her, but she doesn’t care to push it any more right now.

“What’s the latest with your case?” she asks and points to the computer screen behind him. “Have you got the intel?”

“No. I’m still waiting for my contact to get back to me. I’ll notify the League when it’s time for us to go seize the factory and empty it of its weapons.” Bruce turns back to look up at the computer screen as he pulls up some more information. “Interestingly enough, Waller’s been sending data my way.”

“Interesting,” Diana agrees. “Also suspicious.”

“Also suspicious.”

“A small time weapons dealer hardly seems like her kind of ballpark,” Diana observes, and she stands up to look over Bruce’s shoulder at the screen. “Then again, this isn’t our kind of ballpark, either.”

“Well, I think nuclear weapons are being formed here, so that takes it from just fancy guns and bombs to something with a much more devastating and widespread effect. Still not up Waller’s alley enough to get her to handle it herself, but this is something we can step in for.” Bruce pulls up the data he has on the case. Briefly, he glances at Diana. “I assume that whenever the time comes, you want to be included on this mission.”

Diana returns his glance, her expression firm and unyielding. “Yes.”

“Got it.”

“Steve will be fine.”

“And so will you.”

“I will.” She pauses. “Maybe Damian could spend time with him while I'm away on League business.”

Bruce audibly snorts and turns to face her head on, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. “Are you seriously suggesting that my former assassin son who is _notorious_ for his short temper and lack of—no, _absence_ of patience babysit your boyfriend?”

“First of all, Steve is not my boyfriend. Second of all, Damian’s good with technology, which Steve could greatly afford to learn more about, and it might be a good experience for Damian. He likes old time-y stuff, you said,” she points out.

“He likes old swords, Diana. Not old people.”

“Steve isn’t old!” she argues. “He’s just a little displaced in time. That’s all. He’s a coma patient.”

“Anyway, I don’t think we’ll get the information we need soon enough for you to have to worry about who’s going to watch Steve.”

“Well, I can’t keep Steve locked in my apartment forever. How is he supposed to get acquainted with the world if he’s sitting in there? If I take him out, I risk something happening to him, but if I keep him inside, he’ll go crazy.” She throws her hands up in exasperation.

“Diana. Maybe take a deeper look at that fear something’s going to happen to him, ok?” Bruce asks gently. “I’d bet my last dollar that Trevor didn’t get to where he did in the military and then in the eyes of ARGUS by being a delicate flower.”

Again, Diana knows Bruce is right, but she doesn’t fight him. Instead, she just smiles a little at him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for the help, Bruce. I just wanted to let you know what had happened with Waller, and I’m not convinced she doesn’t have my apartment bugged.”

“She probably does.”

“Yeah, she probably does.” She squeezes his shoulder and then lets go. “I’ll call you or stop by if anything else happens, and you do the same, alright?”

“How long will you be in Gotham? You don’t have to go back to Paris soon?”

The mention of Diana’s job makes her eyes go a little wide, and she quickly whips out her phone to check her email. “One of these days Estelle is going to fire me,” she mutters.

“She’s your assistant.”

Diana laughs and shakes her head, eyes still glued to her phone screen. “She and the rest of my assistants and interns do far more for me than I deserve. Um…” She types furiously on her phone. “Right now, I have no idea how long I’ll be in Gotham. I’d like to be back in France by the end of the week, but I don’t know how realistic that goal is. If something comes up with Steve or the League, I’ll be here longer.”

“Alright.”

“Whatever happens, I’ll let you know.”

“I’m sure I’ll already know.”

Diana resists the urge to roll her eyes as she finishes her email of apology and requests for the upcoming week to Estelle. “I’ll see you, Bruce. Thank you again.”

Bruce’s reply comes as a grunt, and Diana knows she’s lost him back to his computer, which suits her fine as it’s probably about time for her to get back to Steve, anyway. Muttering a short string of Greek swears under her breath over the frustrations of her day job, she makes her way back outside and to her car in the circular driveway in front of Wayne Manor.

On the drive back to her apartment, she feels endlessly frustrated with herself for having let Bruce’s usually minor irritating comments affect her on a deeper level. She’s better than losing her temper than she used to be, at least, from when Steve had known her. Back when she’d first entered the world of man, she’d been exactly like the lightning she’d used to stop Ares—flashing too hot and too quick to have a direct and impactful landing. She’d been power and emotion all wrapped up in one bolt of a person, and she’d learned the cost of being that way since then.

As she drives, she tries to let the gentle rocking motion of the car calm her down. She hates losing her cool, and she hates looking weak. Asking for help is certainly not something she’s above, but she absolutely hates being out of control. When she’s out of control, bad things happen. She’d learned that lesson while wrapped in the treads of a tank, looking up into the sky, and realizing what the survivor on the beach was planning to do.

She doesn’t know why she’s still surprised to discover that no matter what, she always goes back to that moment. That one single moment that seemed to define everything she did from then on. Her stomach churns, reminding her that she’s supposed to be calming down, not getting herself even more upset. Inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly. Inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly.

When she’s back at the apartment complex, she drops her car off with the valet and goes up to her apartment. The closer she gets, the more anxious she feels. Her heart buzzes like hummingbird wings, a total cacophony of thunder and vibrations that threaten to shake her apart until she’s the dust she very well fears she could one day become. She unlocks her door and goes inside, breath caught in her throat that maybe Steve really will be gone. After everything she’s been through today, Steve will no longer be there, and she’ll have to face the fact that she’ll have to continue to live forever without him for the second time around.

But Steve’s at the island in the kitchen. He’s perched on top of one of the stools with a mug full of steaming coffee beside him. His wet hair and changed clothes tell Diana that he grabbed a shower while she was gone, and now he’s buried in the ARGUS file. At the sound of the door, he looks up and over at her, blue eyes alert and warm. A smile slowly spreads across his face, and he turns to face her as she starts toward him.

Before she knows it, she’s wrapped up in a hug with her face buried against his shoulder. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” he murmurs back. “Everything ok?”

She nods and inhales the smell of her soap on his body, feeling warmth fill her from the arch of her skull to the soles of her feet. “Yes. I just missed you.”

“Want to know something?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

Diana squeezes her eyes shut and hugs him a little tighter as she thinks about the talk she and Bruce just had. Yes, she’s afraid to let Steve out of the apartment because if something happens to him, she’ll never be able to forgive herself. She couldn’t save him once, and she refuses to let him die a second time. Out of all the feelings that could be driving her choices now, the main one is an intense, cold crackle of loss that burns beneath the surface of her skin. Loss has knitted itself into a tapestry of tragedy inside her heart, and she feels the knot at the end of it start to unravel. Years of losing friends to old age, lovers to arguments, jobs to lesser qualified men…all of that loss has woven itself into the very stitches of her being, and she feels its iciness creeping over her.

So she takes a breath, and she concentrates on how it feels to be close to Steve again. If she’s still enough, she can even feel the sturdy thump of his pulse through his shirt, and she synchronizes her meditative breathing to that steady reliable beat of his life. “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“We should get you some clothes. Real clothes that are yours and not just borrowed from Bruce.”

“I…yeah, I suppose that would be a good idea.”

“Let’s take a break from the technology stuff for a while. There’s a lot to see outside.”

“Ok. Yeah. I can do that.”

She pulls back and looks up into his face, knowing she could get lost in him as if he were her own personal Bermuda Triangle—a mysterious stretch of physical existence that steals her heart and swallows it whole, never to be seen again except in _Unsolved Mysteries_ reruns on TV. She smiles as that mental picture paints its way across the back of her mind, and she kisses his cheek with a sweet little peck. She’s experienced loss, yes, but in order to experience loss, she’s had to experience love first. As she looks at Steve, she feels love.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I can do that, too.”

* * *

As a child, Amanda Waller had never spent too much time learning Greek mythology. She knew the basics such as Zeus being the main god, Aphrodite being the goddess of love, and Athena the goddess of wisdom, but when it came to more than that, she’d never had the interest to really delve into the mythology and its details. Amanda Waller the director of ARGUS, however, is very interested in Greek mythology.

The first time she’d thought about looking into the existence of the gods was after she’d found the witch—the Enchantress. If these beings could exist, then who was to say that the gods couldn’t? And so Amanda Waller had started down a path she couldn’t turn back on, but even if she’d had the choice, she wouldn’t have wanted to. If she knows anything about getting what she wants, then she knows that ambition is the key, and that…that is something she’s never lacked. Even before the tragedy that had turned her into who she is had happened, she’d never been short on ambition, but now she allows the memory of her family to fuel her and carry her forward. After all, it’s because of them that she’ll do whatever it takes so that the ends justify the means.

And that was how she’d found the Goddess. A little bit of research and a little bit of paying people who would talk the right amount when presented with some green paper persuasion sure gave her a lot of shortcuts into finding out what she’d needed. Waller’s certain that Diana herself doesn’t even know what Waller knows, and she finds an odd sense of satisfaction in knowing that amongst the world of humans, her plan is a secret known only to her.

When Waller’s back at her home, she’ll have to make contact and use her position as liaison to share the good news and tell the Goddess that everything is going as planned. Amanda Waller looks out the window and feels a tiny twinge of anticipation. She’s never been one who likes to wait, but she of all people knows how essential it is to master the art of waiting. So if waiting is what she needs to do in order to further her plan, her mission, then she knows that’s what she’ll do. She’s waited this long already. She can wait a little bit more.


	7. Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to Rex501st, morethanpixels, thesinfulship, and pennylane93 for commenting!
> 
> The plot picks up a bit more, and though it may not seem like it, I swear it's connected to Waller! :) As always, I'm a slut for feedback as it helps me know what I'm doing right and what people would like to see more of (as well as feeding my need for validation and approval)!
> 
> Enjoy! :)

“Steve, you’re driving me crazy.”

“I can’t help it! They’re just so tight!” Steve yanks on his jeans as he tries to get comfortable in his seat.

“I promise you, those jeans are no tighter than the pants you wore during the War,” Diana says, completely unimpressed by his theatrics. “You needed pants. As much as you want to argue with me about it, you can’t go around wearing Bruce’s sweatpants forever.”

“They’re a novelty,” he mutters. “Sweatpants weren’t exactly a thing when I was back in my time.”

“Steve, if you don’t sit still…” Diana looks up from her menu and surveys him over the top edge of the laminated sheet. “Just look at the menu, please. Surely there’s something you’ll eat here, right? You do eat more than coffee, I assume?”

“Yeah, I eat more than coffee.” Steve tugs at the thighs of his jeans and shifts again, meriting a stern glance from Diana. “Sorry, sorry. They’re just _really_ tight.”

“I can’t wait for you to see teenage boys’ pants then,” Diana says, the corner of her mouth turning up into an amused smirk. “They wear their pants much tighter and much skinnier than those you have on. And again, I _promise_ you the pants you have on now aren’t any tighter than the uniform you wore.”

“The uniform I wore gave space in the thighs. There is no space in the thighs or the calves or anywhere, really.”

Diana tries to hide her smile, but she can’t, and she puts the menu up a little higher so Steve can’t see her amusement at his expense. “Why don’t you focus on getting something to eat, ok? This is your first time out in the world of 2018, so let’s celebrate it.”

“Are you laughing at me? Because I can assure you there’s nothing amusing about this situation.”

Unable to hold back now, Diana bursts out laughing, and she lowers her menu again. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it, but you’re just being _really_ funny right now. Funny and cute, and yes, so I’m laughing a little bit, but it’s not meant with ill intent.”

“Mm, yeah. Glad to see you’re having a good time,” he says drily, though the small flicker of a smile through his eyes shows her that he enjoys the banter between them. Sighing, he looks back down at the menu in his hand and peruses it. “I don’t know what half of these things are.”

“Read the descriptions. I have all the faith in the world in your intelligence,” Diana replies, her voice cool as she mentally selects her choice. “I also tried to pick somewhere I thought you’d find something you liked on the menu. With the War and everything, I didn’t know what you’d like to eat, but I figured these were the most basic.”

“I can do any of these sandwiches fine. Soup seems to be pretty neutral…but some of these things. Who the hell puts peanut butter on a burger?” He scowls and sets the menu down as if it’s personally offended him. “Why is it on the menu? Does it even sell?”

“You’d be surprised,” she blithely remarks. “People deep fry Oreos now.”

“Ok, now _that’s_ just insulting.”

A waitress with strawberry blonde hair and a gentle, polite smile comes over then. “Hello, I’m Katie, and I’ll be your server today. May I get you something to drink to start off with?”

“Water, please,” Diana says, her quiet confidence shining through with loving manners.

“Water,” Steve repeats.

“Do you need more time to decide on what to eat?” Katie asks.

Diana glances at Steve, who shakes his head, and she looks back at Katie with that same smile. “No, I think we’re ready. If I could have the harvest salad without the chicken in it, please, I would love that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Katie says, writing it down. “And for you, sir?”

“Could I get the…the baked potato soup and the corned beef sandwich, please?” Steve asks, looking mildly unsure of himself now that he says it out loud. Lack of self-confidence isn’t something he’s overly familiar with, but he’s found throughout the day that he’s starting to become more acquainted with the feeling than he’d like to be. He tells himself he’s only hitting a bit of a rut because he’s trying to get used to the world, and maybe it’s true, but he can’t help the tiny knot of worry in the pit of his stomach that threatens to grow bigger with each step he takes in front of all of these strange people.

“Yes, sir,” Katie happily replies. “I’ll get that in for you right away, and I’ll have your drinks out shortly.”

“Thank you,” Diana says, her smile and voice genuine and warm as Katie walks off. As soon as the waitress is out of sight, she turns her attention back to Steve. “Do you like corned beef?”

“It’s familiar,” he answers with a vague shrug. “It’s what we ate during the War. We had rationed food, which was like—“ He stops himself and lets out a short sigh. “Right. You know what rations are. You lived through the second war and experienced that firsthand probably. Right?”

“Yes.” Diana doesn’t want to embarrass him for trying to explain things to her she already knows, but the fact of the matter is that she’s been in the world now far longer than he ever was. Even before the plane, before his death, he’d only been in his early 30s, and compared to the century she’s lived, the information he knows is no longer of any use to her. “Corned beef was a common ration during the second war, but I didn’t know it had always been popular during the Great War. And even with the corned beef, it was still hard to get meat, and we were often dissuaded from doing so.”

“Because it’d help the boys?” Steve asks, repeating a phrase that was common even back from his time during the Great War.

Diana smiles, wry and not entirely genuine, and she nods. “Yes. So that was a saying Americans used even back when _your_ war was going on.”

Steve doesn’t know how he feels about her referring to the War as _his_ war, as if he somehow had ownership over the whole mess. And if he’d owned the War, he could have stopped it, he thinks. Ultimately, he knows she doesn’t mean it in that sense, but he can’t shake the heavy guilt he feels. Now that he thinks about it, though, he can’t remember a time when he _didn’t_ feel guilty about something. As a child, he’d felt guilty for not wanting to be a farmer. As a teenager, he’d felt guilty for not being able to help in the Philippines. Then as he’d gotten older, his guilt had continued to change from recipient to recipient. His uselessness on the battlefield, that slight hesitation of his finger on the trigger, the inability to get the plane to start fast enough, and all of the other things he’s blamed himself for.

If only, if only, if only.

He clears his throat. Thinking about the past won’t change anything, especially now that he’s 100 years in the future. Everything he’s known is in the past—so far in the past that what he had or hadn’t done probably doesn’t matter anymore, which is a strange thought that occurs to him just then. Suddenly, he feels the anvil of uselessness dropping down onto his chest, just as it had in the Philippines when he’d seen battle for the first time. Useless. He hadn’t been able to stop the bloodshed then nor any other time he’d tried to be a soldier and fight, but he hadn’t been able to stop trying to save the day, either. No matter what he did, he just wound up being caught in another cycle of violence and uselessness.

“Yeah,” he makes himself say when he realizes he’s held the silence a little too long. “Yeah. We were ‘the boys.’ Everything was about ‘helping our boys,’ and it was…strange, I guess. Some of them really were boys who were barely an hour over 18 years old, and then on the opposite side of that, you had old farts like me who’d seen a hell of a lot and done a hell of a lot.”

Diana catches the self-deprecating smile he puts on for her, and for a moment, she thinks about calling him out on it, but she decides not to. If this is who Steve needs to be for the moment, she will not stop him. “You weren’t an old fart.”

“No? Should’ve told that to some of the kids in my command,” he quips with a short laugh. “The ones who were in their 20s? They really thought they were something tough, and Christ, it killed me to see how fast they could be when some days my joints felt like they just couldn’t stop aching.”

“Old injuries?” Diana asks.

“Yeah.” Steve nods and glances down at his arm where he has a faded slash of thickened, scarred skin. “Broke a leg once, fingers numerous times, shot and cut up in other parts…you’ve seen the scars.”

At first, Diana thinks he’s referring to the time she saw him in the healing baths of Themyscira, but then she sees the way he looks at her—curious, a little hopeful, a little shy—and the implication suddenly becomes clear. “Yes. I have.”

Steve doesn’t show a reaction to her response, and he glances down at his arm. “All of these scars…they’re all ones I got before I was put in the water on your magic island.”

“Themyscira isn’t magic,” Diana gently corrects.

“If your theory about the water’s correct, then I’d say it’s magical. You fought the God of War and won. Diana, you’re half-goddess yourself. If that doesn’t say magic…I’d love to hear your definition of it.” He gazes sincerely at her, trying to think of all the ways to tell her she saved his life, and he’s not too proud to admit she’s saved him more than once.

“You only say that because you haven’t met the people I have,” Diana replies. “Once you see what they can do, then you know what magic looks like.”

“And these people…are they friends of yours? And Bruce’s?” Steve questions. Diana pauses, something that doesn’t slip past Steve’s notice, but then she shakes her head no.

“They’re usually the bad guys.” She goes to say more but stops herself when she sees Katie come back to their table with two glasses of water in hand. With a smile, Diana thanks her and takes a deep gulp of the water, grateful for the little interlude.

“Do you fight a lot?” Steve asks then.

“I…” Diana tilts her head to the side as she thinks. “I do. It’s part of my duty as an Amazon, and after having taken a backseat while the world dissolved into chaos time and time again…I fight when I can now.”

“Nice to see that some things haven’t changed,” Steve says with a genuinely fond, quiet smile. Diana smiles back at him, and she reaches across the table to hold her hand out to him.

“I’ve changed in so many ways, but I try to never forget my duty.”

He takes her hand and looks at it, remembering how she’d tried to hold his hand in London. She’d been so innocent then. As he looks up at her face now, he doesn’t think “innocent” is the right word anymore, but neither is “hardened.” In some ways, she’s seen far much more than he ever has, but despite all the horrors she’s witnessed in the world, she doesn’t seem to be embittered or hardened by it all. If anything, she looks determined.

“Have you ever tried to go home?” he asks as he lowers his voice so no one can overhear. “To the island? I remember your mother saying if you left, you couldn’t ever go back. Is that true?”

A pained expression passes across Diana’s face, but she doesn’t try to hide it. Instead, she presses her lips together and nods very slightly. “It’s true. I haven’t tried to find the island for I fear not finding it will break my heart in a way I won’t be able to bounce back from.”

“Diana…” Steve doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t want her to hurt. Moments like these remind him of both her emotional vulnerability and her emotional strength, though he’s never doubted either quality. He wishes he knew as many languages as she does so maybe he could find the right thing to say to help ease her pain a little bit, but he doesn’t, and so he just sits there and struggles.

“It’s fine,” she says gently and places her other hand on top of his, forming a protective cocoon around the strong calloused hand she’s longed for the touch of for too long. “I made the choice to leave Themyscira, and I miss it, but I don’t regret my decision to leave. If I’d stayed…I truly don’t know how I would’ve been able to justify it to myself. And truthfully, I’ve struggled to understand why none of my sisters stepped forward. Out of everyone…and my mother…” She sighs and looks down at the table. “I was raised to believe that we were created to protect mankind. Out of all the reasons in the world, beating Ares and saving mankind were our two main goals we trained for, and yet when the time came for the Amazons to rally together and do what we were created to do, no one stepped forward.”

“When you put it like that…” Steve squeezes her hand a little. “Your mother wasn’t wrong, though, Diana. If you believe in the philosophy of what it means to deserve, then no, we don’t deserve your help, let alone the help of all the Amazons together.”

“But I don’t believe that philosophy. Not anymore.” She lifts her eyes then and meets his, a steady and determined look filling her eyes. “Someone very wise once told me it’s about what you believe, and so I’ve taken it upon myself to make sure I truly believe everyone should be saved. After all, if this was what I was born to do, then who am I to turn my back on it?”

“Human,” Steve replies, the corners of his lips tugging up into a tiny smile. “And I know that that may be a hard concept for a half-goddess like you to grasp but…”

“You’re very funny.” Diana laces her fingers with his and tightens her grip just a hair. She has a feeling it’ll take a while before she’s able to convince herself that letting go of him physically won’t mean that he’ll disappear before her very eyes. Realistically, she knows that things don’t quite work that way, but every time she goes to take her hand away from his, she remembers how he’d let go of her hands and run off to the airplane, leaving only his watch behind. She blinks and brings herself back to Earth. “So. We still have a lot to do.”

“First, get me in the world. Second, save the world. Right?” Steve asks with a smart little grin.

“Something along those lines. I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much information too soon.”

“I’m a spy. I know how to adapt quickly.”

“Alright, then do you want to hack into the protected Wifi network for this deli?” She picks her phone up and holds it out to him, lifting a challenging eyebrow. For a few seconds, Steve stares at the phone blankly, and then he holds his hands up in surrender as he laughs a little.

“Ok, ok, you have a point. I don’t know how to do that yet.”

“Key word being yet?”

“Key word being yet,” he confirms. “But you know how to do things like that?”

“Yes,” she replies simply. “I’ve learned a couple things over the years. Don’t look so shocked—you’re not the only one who can adapt quickly, you know.”

“No! No, I’m not surprised that you can,” Steve quickly protests to explain the odd look on his face as he’d listened to her talk about how she had acquired the knowledge of how to do what sounded like very advanced things with technology. “Honestly, I’m in awe. You’re just…you’re incredible. I mean, I knew you were incredible before now, but this is a whole new side of just how incredible you are.”

Diana’s face softens, and she smiles sweetly at him. “Thank you. It means a lot to hear you say that.”

“Well, I doubt you need my validation in the first place,” Steve replies, smiling back at her.

“I still like knowing that I haven’t disappointed you in how much I’ve changed.” She glances at the phone in her hand and pulls it back to her. “With all the technology, fancy apartments, fast cars, and Louboutins, sometimes it can be difficult to remember who exactly I was when I first came into the world here.”

“I have no idea what that last thing you listed is, but I don’t think it’s what on the outside who shows off who you are. You’ve had to adjust and change who you are to blend in over the past _century_ , Diana. A century isn’t exactly something that passes in the blink of an eye, you know?”

“Speaking of all the time that’s passed,” she says casually. “Did you get enough time to look through your file?”

“Sort of.” He leans back in his chair, his mouth twisting to the side and settling in an expression of displeasure. “I found out which guys were ARGUS and thought I’d be good for them. Men I trusted. Men who I had no clue did this kind of thing. And the whole time they were watching me and testing me and reporting back to their higher ups that I was a good match.”

“Did they say why they wanted you?” Diana asks, frowning. “That’s what I’m having difficulty understanding. Why you?”

“I’m a spy,” Steve sighs. “I was good at my job, too, though I guess what you got to see doesn’t show off that I’m actually _not_ a dingbat. According to the information the file had, they wanted me because I’m highly skilled in strategic maneuvers, combat, weaponry knowledge, piloting, and espionage. Everything I did back during the War.”

“But why you? Why not anyone else?”

“Because I broke the rules,” Steve replies, looking weary. “I was good at ignoring what my superiors told me, and trust me, when Sir Patrick—Ares—whatever you want to call him, when he told me at the pub that he knew I was planning something to get myself court martialed or killed, that court martial wouldn’t have been my first time.”

This little piece of news is something Diana’s hearing for the first time, but now that she knows, she can’t say she’s all that surprised to discover it. “That was something to happen a lot?”

Steve snorts and laughs, giving her an incredulous look. “Oh, yeah, of course I was court martialed before. Do you have any idea how many of my commanding officers I pissed off in basic all the way up through to where I was before I died? I was one court martial away from being permanently branded Train Wreck Trevor.”

Diana covers her mouth to hide her smile. “No. That was not a nickname of yours.”

“Well…not quite.” He shrugs, enjoying her smile. “But I’m trying to make a point here.”

“Point taken.” She starts to say something else when her phone begins to buzz. Glancing down, she sees it’s Estelle and gives Steve an apologetic look. “I’ve got to take this. It’s my assistant, and if there are any fires I need to put out…”

“Take your time. I’ll just watch the…the flickers,” he says with a nod toward the TV up above.

“It’s called a television, and what you remember as ‘flickers’ are now called movies. So there’s your new word for the day.” Diana grins at him and slides her thumb across the phone as she gets up to go talk in private in the bathroom. “ _Estelle, bonjour!_ ”

“Movies,” Steve mutters under his breath and looks up at the TV. “Television. Right.”

Diana hasn’t gotten around to explaining the high tech behind the pictures on the screen—why is it in color? Why are the people talking? How do they get sound to come through? Where’s the orchestra? Is that what baseball uniforms really look like now?—but he remembers seeing television mentioned in one of the books he’d read earlier.

As he watches the baseball game on TV, a slow dull ache starts back behind his eyes. He rubs at his eyes with his hands and blinks, but the ache doesn’t go away. He can’t remember the last time he had a headache, but he knows he used to have them all the time when he got to the Philippines. He’d never been around that much gunfire, that many explosions. His head had rung for hours, even days after the battle had ended. It had been a cruel way to start his military career, but it had been something he’d wanted to do, and he would’ve been damned if he’d let something as small as a headache stop him.

 

_Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end_

_One hundred years to make amends._

 

When he hears the voice, his head jerks up to find the origin of it. Instinct creeps into his body, and he’s instantly on edge as he looks around to either side of him, hearing the echoes of the voice ringing throughout his brain.

 

_A blood price paid, Her pain awakes,_

_The goddess who no longer needs to wait._

 

As he looks all around, no one else seems to be hearing what he is, and he doesn’t know if he feels more panicked or curious. Out of everything he’s experienced in battle, and God knows he’s experienced a lot, especially the last time he was an acting soldier, he hasn’t heard a voice quite like this. He starts to stand up to go find Diana, to tell her something might be wrong, but he sees an image flash--no, flicker--before him.

A woman looks down at him as he looks up, and he gets the feeling he’s underwater. The surface ripples and curves above him, dimpling with the gentle motions of her hands as she reaches down to touch its delicate glassiness. He can’t quite see her face, but he knows he’s looking her in the eyes.

 _Hero_.

* * *

 

Diana walks out of the bathroom after hanging up from Estelle. She feels guilty for leaving her whole team of eager assistants and interns with basically no direction, but she has faith in Estelle’s leadership and knowledge of the job. Typing a quick message in her phone, she makes a note to herself to see about giving Estelle a raise when she’s back in France.

The whole thought of going back to France is another issue she has to tackle, but she can’t think about it now. Between Waller and Steve and Justice League things, she needs to be in Gotham for the time being. Her position at The Louvre will still be there as long as the work gets done, and Diana has never been one to do something without completing it.

Pushing these thoughts from her mind, she walks out into the main part of the deli and spots Steve starting to get up from his chair. Her heart skips a little, and she smiles as she moves toward him. It isn’t until she’s halfway across the room that she catches the look on his face—panicked, confused, looking at something no one else around him seems to be looking at. She picks up the pace and starts to call his name.

_Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end,_

_One hundred years to make amends._

 

For a moment, Diana thinks that the TVs have been turned up extra loud, but then Steve’s eyes meet hers, and she knows that he heard the voice, too. She starts to run.

* * *

Steve manages to see through the foggy water and find Diana.

_Hero._

_Hero._

_Hero._

His eyes lock with hers.

Diana.

And then like before, he descends into darkness.


	8. Grief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to oliviaofthemyscira, thesinfulship, Rex501st, morethanpixels, and Trax28 for commenting! <3
> 
> Again, I'm using creative license to build up some of Steve's backstory and also just a LITTLE bit for Greek mythology!
> 
> As always, I shamelessly seek validation through feedback ;) So until the next chapter, enjoy!

Steve.

Diana doesn’t remember reaching him right as he started convulsing.

She doesn’t remember making the decision to pick him up in front of everyone’s curious eyes.

She doesn’t remember taking him outside.

She doesn’t remember flying him to Bruce’s house

All she remembers is seeing the way Steve’s hair falls into his closed eyes.

She remembers panic.

She remembers fear.

She remembers losing him the first time.

When she crashes through the secret entrance to the cave that Bruce created specifically for her when she’s flying, he’s already waiting for her. As much as his obsessive need to maintain the best security system in the world can be irritating at times, Diana’s relieved to find that he saw her coming in on the cameras and was waiting.

“He collapsed,” she says, forcing her voice to stop shaking. “I don’t know what happened, but he collapsed—it was—it was like there was this voice—and he started—he started—I don’t know what happened.”

“Bring him to the lab,” Bruce orders, already running to clear a table, Diana hot on his heels. She sets him down on the cold metal table and looks at Steve. He’s no longer convulsing, but his face is still very, very white, and he hasn’t regained consciousness.

“Don’t you do this,” she whispers fiercely. “Don’t you do this, Steve Trevor. I lost you once.”

“Diana, step back,” Bruce orders as he steps forward with a flashlight to check Steve’s eyes. Whether she notices the harshness in his command or not, she doesn’t react—she just does as he says. For the time being, Bruce is the one in charge, and Bruce is the only one she can think of who could help Steve. Anyone else would’ve gone straight to a doctor, but with Steve’s strange new biology and his even stranger history, taking him to a hospital would be worse than just standing there and letting him work out this unexplained fit on his own. Bruce, though not a licensed doctor, knows what he’s doing when it comes to medical and even surgical procedures, that much Diana knows. Out of everyone who could possibly help Steve, she trusts Bruce the most.

“How is he even able to be sick or—or hurt?” she asks, hoping to the gods she’s able to keep the panic out of her voice, though surely all of Olympus knows the terror in her heart as well as she knows the caress of Steve’s touch. “The pools on Themyscira should have fixed this. Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know. Alfred, where the hell are you?” Bruce shouts so the intercom system will pick it up. “Diana, wait outside.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

His head snaps up, and he looks at her with those harsh icy eyes of his that he so rarely turns onto her when he’s frustrated or angry. “That wasn’t a request, Diana. There’s no use for you in here. Go.”

His words sting, but Diana refuses to be the hysterical woman crying over her male lover, and so she grits her teeth and turns, walking out of the room with tension squeezing her shoulders tight. Her heart’s going faster than it ever has—or at least, it feels that way—and she can’t seem to take a full breath of oxygen.

_Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out._

Over and over, she repeats these two commands to herself. She doesn’t pay attention to where she walks, but she moves. As long as she moves, she’ll be ok, she tells herself. As long as she can stay active and do something, she won’t have to worry about anyone or anything. Steve is all right, and Bruce will make sure of it. So with those lies echoing through her brain, she makes her way down hall after hall, staircase after staircase, until she finds herself in an unfinished part of the cave. If she remembers correctly, Bruce had mentioned a few months ago that he’d like to turn this space into…she can’t remember. Did he say a aquatic therapy room? Or a new lab?

She stops walking and leans over, putting her hands on her knees as she catches her breath. Silently, she continues to make a conscious effort to breathe, and she closes her eyes to steady herself. Claiming that she’s never felt fear before would be foolish, considering all the years she’s been alive, especially in a world where danger and death are around every corner. That large but subtle change had been difficult for her to adjust to in her first few years without Steve. On Themyscira, she’d always trusted the healers and the pools there on the island to fix any ailments. If anyone were cut by a sword, they were inevitably healed. If anyone felt under the weather, there was no question as to whether or not they would recover. On Themyscira, everyone recovered from everything. Except for bullets.

And in this world, Diana’s seen more than her share of the kind of destruction humans can wreak on the Earth. She’s watched gas fill lungs and choke the life out of innocent people. She’s watched bombs tear men apart until there are no pieces of them left. Through pain, anguish, and unbearable loss, she’s seen the damage that Zeus’s creations have inflicted upon each other without batting an eyelash. To not feel fear after witnessing all of the horrible things that have taken place since her arrival would be foolish, and Diana is anything but that.

Yet all those moments of fear can’t compare to the tiny eternity of fear she lives in now. Fear of this intensity and for someone so dear to her is almost foreign to her, and she has to continue forcibly telling herself when to inhale and exhale so that she doesn’t just stop and asphyxiate right there.

“Please let him be ok,” she whispers, her voice so quiet no one would be able to hear it even if she weren’t alone. “Oh, Zeus…oh, Hera…hear me and keep Steve safe. Please keep him safe. I have tried to honor you ever since my birth, and I pray I’ve only done enough to have you smile upon me now. Please…just keep him safe.”

Even though she hadn’t expected a response, the silence that echoes back to her speaks louder than any god ever could.

* * *

Steve expects to inhale water into his lungs as he looks up at the woman through the surface of the water. He should be choking, dying, and yet the longer he looks, the more he realizes he doesn’t feel the effects of drowning. He’d nearly drowned on Themyscira. If it hadn’t been for Diana, he certainly would’ve ended up at the bottom of the ocean, a crumpled pile of shattered bones, weighted lungs, and tangled metal.

_Captain Trevor. Hero._

“Who are you?” he asks. He still can’t make out the face above him, but he knows the voice is light and feminine, the complete opposite of how the water around him looks. For someone to have such a sweet voice, he would’ve pictured himself somewhere brighter.

_You and I have met once before._

“Tell me your name,” Steve orders, feeling himself slip back into the familiar, comfortable skin of the authoritative military captain. “Where am I?”

_You are not to know just yet, but you are exactly where you need to be._

“Who the hell are you?” he shouts. Since he’s surrounded by water, he expects the echoing vibrations of his voice to be absorbed into the liquid as it presses against him, but he hears the hollow ricochet of travelling sound as if he’s in an empty room with nothing in it but himself.

_You will know me when you see me, Captain Trevor. When the time has come for you to see my face, you will know._

In vain, Steve tries to push through the water and swim up toward the voice, this beautiful voice, but he can’t move. No matter how hard he thrashes, he stays in place. Or maybe he’s moving, but he just can’t tell. At this point, he’s not sure if he even trusts his own perception of the world he’s in, and panic causes the back of his throat to constrict.

_Know that you are not alone. Nothing will happen to you as long as you remain in my care—this I promise you. You will never have reason to doubt me, and I swear it to you on the lives of all whom I love. Your purpose has yet to unfold, Captain, but it will come. And when it does, you will be the hero for more than just humans._

“What the hell are you talking about?” Steve shouts louder, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. Borderline frantic, he looks around and tries to find a way out. However he got in here, there’s got to be a way out, he reasons, but despite how hard he tries to remember, he has no idea how he got to be trapped in this strange dark water. Suddenly, he doesn’t remember.

_Be at peace, Steve Trevor. The worst is over._

* * *

Diana’s only been gone for the lab for what feels like a matter of seconds, though Bruce knows time has passed more quickly than how he perceives it. He’s not unaware of how he spoke to her just now, how blunt and, well, harsh he’d been. He can certainly get away with talking to the rest of the League in that manner, but when it comes to Diana, he does his best to avoid it, not because she’s a woman, and he wants to go easier on her. Hell, Bruce knows he’s lucky that she hasn’t taken it upon herself to destroy him because he has no doubt she’d give him a good run for his money, so he doesn’t want to go easy on her because he thinks she can’t handle the harshness the way the rest of the League can. It’s just that when it comes to Diana, she’s the one with the purest heart out of everyone else; she’s the one who radiates love and kindness because that’s how she was raised and how she views everyone around her.

However, that doesn’t mean the rest of the League is without genuine love and kindness. All of them have some kind of goodness in their hearts, and on his best day, Bruce might be able to admit that he’s driven by a sense of right versus wrong instead of a pathological obsession with crime and punching people. With Diana around, it’s easy to feel that he might not be so broken as he’s always pictured himself to be. And so maybe that’s why he chooses to speak to her with more a little less abrasiveness than he does with the others. Maybe.

Bruce is about to yell for Alfred again as he checks Steve’s other pupil when Steve suddenly jerks away and flinches the way one would after waking up from a deep sleep with a hot white light shining into their eyes. Knocking Bruce’s hand out of the way, Steve scrambles and instantly takes on a defensive stance. “Hey—hey!”

“Fucking hell!” Bruce exclaims, scowling as he draws back. “Trevor, do you know where you are?”

“After having that light in my eyes, no. I’m now blind, thanks,” Steve shoots back with an equally irritated scowl. He rubs at his eyes and winces at the dull ache in his head. A headache…he remembers having a headache earlier. Was it before breakfast? After breakfast? Had he eaten breakfast at all? “Diana.”

“No, you’re not going anywhere yet. You’re sick—“

“No, I’m not.” Steve shoves Bruce’s flashlight away from him. “What even is that thing? It’s so bright.”

“It’s a flashlight.”

Steve scoffs and sighs, not looking surprised. “Of course it’s a flashlight. Back in my day, you know, they didn’t look quite so expensive.”

“I need to finish examining you.”

“What?” Steve rubs his eyes again and glances at Bruce. “No. I’m fine.”

“You’ve been unconscious for a number of minutes, and you had a seizure. I would say you’re anything _but_ fine.”

It’s that moment when Alfred chooses to come running in, breaking the unorthodox standoff between his ward and Steve. Briefly, he looks at Bruce and then at Steve and then back at Bruce. “Master Bruce, I was under the impression that there was a life or death medical matter requiring my immediate assistance.”

“Well, he’s awake, so I’d assume he’s one step closer to alive than dead, but looks can be deceiving,” Bruce drily replies. “He collapsed and had a seizure while he and Diana were out.”

“Where _is_ Diana?” Steve asks, realizing that she isn’t in the room with them. He feels mildly uneasy, like he’s staying in someone else’s house without the mutual friend they share to be the buffer between them.

“I asked her to leave.”

“Why?”

“Seeing you was upsetting for her.”

“Jesus.” Steve runs his hands down his face and sighs, feeling even more guilt pile onto his shoulders. He’s still not entirely sure what happened back there at the deli, but knowing that whatever it was had upset Diana is more than enough to make him blame himself. “Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I’m certain she hasn’t left the Manor, though,” Bruce offers. “My security system didn’t capture her departure, and besides, I doubt she’d leave you here. Now lie back. I’m not through with this examination.”

Steve gazes warily at Bruce, easing again into a defensive position. “I’m fine. I don’t…look—I’m 100% capable of getting up on my own.”

Bruce watches as the time-displaced pilot does exactly that, and this time, it’s his turn to sigh. “There could be a number of unknown medical complications going on inside you that we have absolutely no information about.”

“Look, I survived death once, I think I’m ok,” Steve says with a cheeky smirk. “Can’t get much more destructive than a plane full of mustard gas exploding.”

“Diana will never forgive me if I let you walk out of here without making sure you’re ok,” Bruce replies, blunt. He knows it’s dirty to pull the Diana card, and normally, he wouldn’t feel bad about it, but seeing Steve’s reaction and the way he goes still as he rethinks the decision to leave the lab makes him feel the tiniest bit bad.

Steve shrugs in surrender and wearily sits on the edge of the lab table. “So. What all do you need to do to me?”

He’s patient and doesn’t put up a fight while Bruce and Alfred complete their examination, a task which Bruce is sure is much harder for the former soldier than he’s making it look. When Bruce is done, he steps back and folds his arms over his chest, frowning. “Diana mentioned something about a voice.”

Steve doesn’t reply for a moment, hesitating as he contemplates how much he should share. “I…there might have been something along those lines.”

“And if Diana heard it, too, there’s no reason to assume it was a neurological or psychological experience only you alone faced,” Bruce remarks. “What did the voice say?”

“Something about a hero? I don’t know. It was so quick, and I wasn’t really memorizing everything she said.”

“She? So it was a woman?” Bruce presses.

“Yes. At least, I think so. Very light voice. Musical.” Steve’s knee starts bouncing as he feels increasingly antsy. “I have no idea who it was or what its purpose was, but I know I heard something, and then that’s when I must’ve keeled over, I guess.”

Bruce’s face expresses worry and concern, two discomforting feelings that Steve wished weren’t appropriate in this scenario. “We need Diana in here. She might be able to answer more questions. Alfred, would you bring her in?”

“Yes, Master Bruce,” Alfred replies and exits the lab to go get her. Steve and Bruce are now alone with each other, and the awkwardness isn’t missed by either of them.

“Thanks,” Steve says after a few brief moments. “For the examination and for the whole taking me in when Waller contacted you about me thing…otherwise, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Bruce gives him a look that’s hard to read, even for a spy such as Steve, and he nods a bit in return. “Of course.” He pauses for another few brief moments and then clears his throat. “You mean very much to her.”

“That’s an honor I don’t take lightly,” Steve replies in all sincerity.

“Good.”

“How has she been over the years?” Steve asks suddenly, squinting his eyes a little as he searches Bruce’s face as best as he can to read a reaction. “Has she been ok? Happy?”

“Ok, yes. Happy, however, isn’t the word I would use to describe her,” Bruce admits, and he leans back against the table, surveying Steve. “She’s faced a lot of pain in her life. In the 100 years that she’s been here in this world, she’s experienced far more pain and tragedy than she felt in her thousands of years on Themyscira.”

Steve shifts his jaw to the side, again feeling that massive burden of guilt pressing down on his shoulders and into his very blood. “From what I understand, death and aging don’t work quite the same way on Amazon Island the way they do here.”

“She’s had to watch as friends grow old and die. Lovers. Everyone and everything she could possibly care about. And it all started with you.”

For a moment, Steve isn’t sure he really heard what he thinks he’s heard, but when Bruce’s unwavering gaze doesn’t change, he frowns a little. “I’m not entirely sure what you’re telling me, sir.”

“Just Bruce,” Bruce corrects him, though not in his typical abrupt manner. “I’m not attempting to imply anything negative. It’s just something I’ve observed. Diana didn’t know what losing someone felt like until your plane crashed in the Themysciran sea.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, you know.” Steve feels himself getting testy, an unhealthy mixture of discomfort and guilt stirring in his gut. “I didn’t consciously make the decision to end up on that island so Diana could lose her aunt because of me. If I’d known that I was about to start something irreversible that would cause Diana pain, I never would’ve done so.”

“I know,” Bruce simply replies. “But with your memory, your presence, comes grief and loss. Right now, she’s happy, and I’m glad. God knows if anyone deserves it, she does. She’s certainly tried to be over the years, though the number of times I’ve seen her smile is equal to the number of years I had with my parents before they were murdered.” He pauses and stares hard at Steve, as if he’s trying to see through Steve’s skull and into his brain. “I don’t presume to know your story and what you’ve experienced in your time alive, but as a soldier, I’m sure you’re very used to knowing how it feels to lose someone.”

Faces flash all throughout Steve’s memory, and his jaw tenses without him even realizing it. He sees the boys who’d died in the Philippines, the natives who’d been slaughtered in vain, his father’s grave back home in the family cemetery, and all the boys whose livelihoods he’d been gifted with back before he’d been assigned to British Intelligence. Far too many faces and names are engraved into an eternal mausoleum in his head, and he sees all of them as he nods in response to Bruce. “Yes. I am.”

“So you know that grief becomes a habit.” Bruce stops leaning on the table and moves away, walking toward the opposite side of the room. “Right after, people tell you that it’ll get easier as time goes on, and you believe them. Yes, maybe things do get a little easier, but one year passes, and then two years pass, and then three and four and five and so on until one day you notice how your life has evolved _with_ grief. It’s become a habit to mourn, and you don’t know how to break it, so you don’t. What kind of a person are you if you don’t mourn the dead? What will other people think of you if you suddenly stop grieving? So you don’t. And it’s those patterns that continue to grow and overlap with each other that are all signs of what an ingrained habit it truly is. Most of us only get to mourn for a number of decades until we die. But Diana has mourned for a century, and if you hadn’t come back to life, she would’ve mourned you for centuries to come. That kind of grief doesn’t go away overnight. Those habits and fears don’t flicker off the way you’d think they would.”

Steve watches as Bruce messes around with some of the files he has on his desk, and he listens to everything Bruce says. In a way, he understands exactly what Bruce is saying. Whenever he thinks of grief becoming a habit that never gets easier, he thinks of his father. The only son of a farmer, Steve had been expected to take over the farm when he became an adult, but Steve had always felt sick at the thought of being a farmer. He respected what his father did, and he knew that without that farm, his family would’ve starved and struggled to survive. But even now, when he thinks about those fields, he feels his stomach clench from such unhappiness, he has to force himself to think of something else. Anything but the farm, his father’s expectations, and how he’d killed them as easily as the fever had killed his father.

So he’d destroyed his father’s goals for him, and he’d set out to enroll in the country’s most elite military school, all the while feeling his father’s disappointment beating into his back like a whip’s lashes. Every potential failure was something Steve told himself he wouldn’t add to the list of ways he’d continued to disappoint his family, and so he’d made himself be the best. But then his father had died, and there was nothing left for Steve to do but prove himself to be invaluable to the military. With each achievement and each medal, Steve had unknowingly been pinning them onto the grief he carried for his father, and he hasn’t realized it until now. All of the missions he’d taken and the danger he’d put himself in after his father had died had only been one more nail in the coffin.

“Yeah. I can…yeah. Grief is a habit,” he finally says when he realizes he’s been quiet for far too long.

“Diana will continue to grieve you, even though you’re right beside her,” Bruce points out. “She’ll need time and patience to undo a century’s worth of sadness.”

Before Steve can reply, Diana and Alfred return to the lab. Steve barely gets to register her presence before he feels her arms around him in a tight hug. Neither of them speaks while she gets out everything she needs to in the tight intimate embrace in which she holds him. After a couple moments, she pulls back to look at him, her relief and worry unbridled as they ride across her face in a wave of emotions. “What happened? Are you ok? Alfred said there’s nothing physically wrong with you as far as he and Bruce can tell.”

“I have no idea what happened,” Steve honestly replies. He doesn’t let go of her, nor she him, and he brings his hand up to her hair. “I feel totally fine. Not even woozy or groggy. Just…fine. Like nothing happened.”

“I’m curious to know more about the voice,” Bruce speaks up from his corner of the room. As if noticing him for the first time, Diana looks over her shoulder toward him. “Trevor told me the voice was female. Light and musical.”

“What did she say?” Diana asks as she looks back at Steve.

“I don’t know. Something about a hero.”

“Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end. One hundred years to make amends,” Diana quietly quotes. “A blood price paid, Her pain awakes, the goddess who no longer needs to wait.”

Steve’s eyes widen as he recognizes what she’s just said, and he snaps his fingers. “Yes! Yes, that’s what I heard.”

Diana’s face goes from relief to something darker. “We both heard it.”

“What does that mean?” Bruce asks as he sees the way Diana’s muscles tense, how rigid she goes the more she thinks about the words she’s just uttered.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “But if the two of us heard it at the same time, it couldn’t have been a hallucination unless we were both under the same kind of spell or hallucinogen.”

“A hallucinogen of that kind would have to be altered with magic to make you hear the same things, anyway,” Bruce points.

“And see,” Steve adds, meriting looks from both Bruce and Diana.

“See?” Diana asks. She frowns even harder and stares at him in such a way that makes Steve wonder how the hell anyone can ever bear to withhold information from her even without her lasso. “I didn’t see anything. I just heard the voice and saw you fall.”

This time, Steve frowns, and he folds his arms. “You didn’t see anything? Anyone?”

“Anyone?” Diana repeats.

“Yeah. The lady above the water.”

Diana closes her eyes. “I feared we were facing something from my world.”

“Is that what this is?” Bruce asks.

Diana sighs and opens her eyes, looking back and forth between Steve and Bruce. “Just from listening to what Steve is saying and adding in what I experienced, I think we are.”

“How do we narrow it down?” Steve jumps in.

Suddenly, Diana is overwhelmed. She doesn’t have the answers for the questions being thrown at her, but she can’t bear to tell them she has no idea. Not when they look at her with such expectation and faith. Taking a breath and letting it out, she makes up her mind and makes a choice. “I have an idea.”


	9. Goddess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, oliviaofthemyscira, IllusiveWritings, Trax28, Rex501st, Anon, and morethanpixels for commenting!
> 
> I know this chapter is a lot of exposition with not as much Diana/Steve interaction, but I promise to make up for it (doin' the sex) in the next chapter or two! And just as another reminder, I'm taking some creative license with Greek mythology here, so some of this is legit stuff that's in any Greek mythology book, and some of this I've added my own little flair to in order to make it fit!
> 
> As always, I seek validation through feedback, and I hope y'all are still hanging in here with me! Enjoy :)

“Please, Diana. The League could help,” Bruce says, repeating the same argument he’s used for the past several hours.

“No,” Diana firmly replies, giving him the same answer she’s given for the past several hours in response. “I don’t want the League involved with this. If my instincts are correct, and whatever is happening with Steve really is the work of something or someone from my world, then I’m the one who knows best how to deal with it.”

“But you don’t have to do it by yourself,” Bruce argues back. “If someone from your world is messing with Trevor, then you’ll be the one calling the shots. The League will do whatever you say without any hesitation.”

“Not to interrupt this absolutely thrilling argument, but could I jump in for a moment?” Steve interjects. “Whatever’s going on is something that’s going on with _me_ , and I’d really like a say in some of the stuff that’s being decided without me.”

Diana pauses, as if realizing this for the first time, and she feels guilt press against her heart. She nods apologetically toward him. “You’re right. But I also want everyone to stay safe no matter what happens, and if we’re dealing with someone from my world, then I’m the best one who can keep you safe.”

“I know,” Steve says gently as he changes his approach in his appeal to her. “I understand that, and I respect it, but _my_ life is the one that’s being dealt with here, and I’d just like to have some input in our plan of attack.”

“Diana’s life is also involved,” Bruce speaks up with a glance toward the woman herself. “She heard the same voice you did, so whatever’s happening to you, she’s being affected in some way.”

“Again, I understand and respect that, and I’m not even asking to be the one to call the shots. I’m asking to be included in this.” Steve wishes he didn’t sound so frustrated, but he can hardly keep his irritated tone at bay. After Diana had explained that the more someone was aware of a Greek entity, the easier it was for them to latch on, she and Bruce had plunged into mapping out different routes on how to identify who was trying to contact Steve and how to go about summoning the entity. It’s been a long time since he’s been actively excluded from planning, he muses. Even though he feels like he’s only been napping for two weeks rather than in a coma for 100 years, it’s been a long time.

His promotion to Captain had been a huge honor, one he’s never taken lightly, and as a natural born leader, he likes to be the one either calling the shots or being a part of the team of people calling the shots. In Bruce’s lab, however, he realizes that not only has he fallen behind in society, he’s fallen behind in rank, as well. He watches Diana and Bruce plot and brainstorm together, and he’s hit by the uncomfortable fact that Bruce is now Diana’s partner in battle.

Bruce starts, “No one’s saying you can’t be included—“

“No.” Steve’s eyes flash as he cuts him off. The following silence is flooded with surprise, anger, and tension between all of them, but Steve refuses to look away from Bruce’s eyes. “I understand that I’ve been away for a century, and I understand that times have changed, and people have changed, but I have extensive training in strategic planning, military maneuvers, and espionage from the top military leaders in the world at the Academy. I will _not_ be left out of a plan that involves _me_ like I’m some doughboy who can’t tell his gun from his own ass.”

Another awkward silence follows as Diana and Bruce both stare at him in shock. Diana’s the first to break the tension, clearing her throat as she nods. “You’re right. It wasn’t right of us to leave you out, and I’m sorry.”

“You do—“ Bruce starts, but Diana cuts him off.

“Ok, ok, he’s had enough mansplaining for the day,” she says sharply and gives Bruce a look that means she’s serious. A muscle in Bruce’s jaw tightens, but he falls back and doesn’t say anything else. “And if it’s all right, Bruce, I’d like a few words with Steve alone.”

Bruce’s eyes cut toward Steve, but he gives one terse nod before collecting himself and stalking out of the room without another word. As soon as Bruce is gone, Diana sighs and lowers her gaze so she’s looking at the table in front of her. “I’m sorry. Excluding you was never my intention, but my intent doesn’t negate the fact that it happened, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Steve replies, his voice gentler now that it’s just her he’s speaking to. “I get that we’re all a little…out of our heads now, I guess. I’m just not used to being the guy to follow, you know?”

“You followed me before.” She looks up at him then. Even though she doesn’t specify what “before” refers to, she doesn’t have to because Steve can see the scene clearly in his mind still. He can see that armor of hers deflecting bullets as she crosses the muddy, grey land without a flicker of fear across her face. He’d been so proud of her—inspired by her, even. As he meets her eyes now, he still feels inspired by her, and the powerful surge of pride through his chest nearly takes his breath away.

“That was different,” he says quietly.

“How?” she questions. She’s not challenging him as a means of proving to him that he’s wrong, and she’s right—she’s genuinely curious to know his reasoning.

“It…it’s different because…” Steve wracks his brain to find how to describe exactly what he means. “When I followed you, we were all a team. You, me, Charlie, Chief, and Sammy . We were in it together, and we’d all put something into the plan. We’d spent hours talking about what we were going to do, where we were going to go, when we were going to do this or that. It was all of us. And when I followed you across No Man’s Land, I…I don’t know. It felt right. It felt like what I needed to do. But right now, you and Bruce are talking about what to do, and I’m not being included in it, and I’d like to be. Diana, this is my life. Your life, too. Would you be perfectly content to sit back and let Bruce and me make plans for you and treat you like you have no clue what’s going on?”

Diana winces as she understands Steve’s point, and she shakes her head. “No. I’d want to be a part of the process.”

“Right. So that’s all I’m asking. I just want some say. Trust me, I’m just as confused as the rest of you are. Not only am I 100 years in the future, but an untrustworthy woman who’s apparently called the shots for my medical care for God knows how long tells me I was about to be recruited for ARGUS, and then out of nowhere, I start hearing voices and seeing visions. I’m really fucking overwhelmed.” He pauses. “Sorry for the profanity.”

Finally, the corners of Diana’s mouth quirk into a tiny smile. “I’ve heard worse, you know.”

“Yeah, but…still…” He shrugs, looking a little sheepish. “I guess that’s the 1918 part of me. Still feels wrong to swear in front of a lady.”

“I was never that good at being a lady in 1918, anyway.” Diana quietly observes him for a few moments, and then she crosses toward him, reaching for his hands. “I’m sorry for the way Bruce and I left you out, Steve. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

“I know you do.” He takes her hands in his, again marveling at how small but powerful they are in his underwhelmingly mortal palms. “Question.”

“Answer, hopefully.”

“What’s this League business Bruce keeps mentioning? Who are they?”

Unfortunately, Diana can no longer dodge the topic of the League. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Steve or that she doesn’t want him to know, but the League is an extremely complicated part of her life that will complicate his the more he knows about it. As far as regular people go, the only person who knows detailed information about the League is Alfred, and that’s because Alfred knows everything. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and looks up at him. “Bruce started this…team. At first, it started out being a team, but the newspapers ran a little wild with it and started calling it the Justice League, so we just call it the League for short.”

“’We,’” Steve repeats back and squints his eyes in that thoughtful way he has. “You’re part of the League.”

She nods. “Yes. It consists of me, Bruce, and several other people who have special abilities to help protect the people of this Earth.”

Steve glances toward the door Bruce exited out of, half-expecting to see the guy standing there and feels relieved to see that Bruce, indeed, is not there. “So Bruce has special abilities? What can he do?”

“That’s…a little complicated,” she admits. “He’s got the brain of a genius, fighting skills that are almost unmatched by anyone in the world, and billions of dollars at his disposal. So take your pick there, and that’s his ability.”

“And the others?”

“We have a man who’s king of the seas, a cyborg, a man who runs really fast, and an alien.”

“…I see.”

Diana laughs at the bewildered expression on his face, and it’s all she can do to resist reaching up and kissing him right there. “I’m sure you’ll meet them all at some point. Once you see us all in action, it isn’t quite so weird.”

“So then Amazon princess and rich guy who dresses up like a bat round out the whole League.”

“Exactly.” She beams up at him proudly. “See? You got it. But I promise—we look much more impressive than we sound.”

“Hey, if you’re a part of the team, then I’m already impressed.” Steve’s whole face softens as he looks down at her, the desire to kiss her sketched across his face, and he sighs quietly. “So. I get to be a part of the planning now?”

“Yes. I promise to never leave you out of it again.” She leans over and kisses his cheek sweetly.

“Thank you.” He smiles and returns the affectionate gesture. Diana closes her eyes as she feels his lips on her cheek, feeling a swell of warmth inside her body that will continue to melt the wall of ice she’s built around her heart in the decades since his death. They’d never had the opportunity to really be together the way they are now, and while the stark logical side of her that she’s been forced to take on in the world of mankind tells her she’s rushing into this, the emotional side of her reminds her she’s never felt anything at all like how she feels for the man kissing her cheek.

“I didn’t want to tell you about the League,” she murmurs as she opens her eyes. “The more you know about what I do, the more danger you’ll be in.”

Clearly unbothered, Steve shrugs. “I’m used to danger. After all, I did sacrifice myself in an explosion.”

Diana forces herself not to flinch at the casual tone of his voice as he mentions a painful event that had shaped her. It’s moments like these when she has to remember that he hasn’t been around in the world since the last time they saw each other. If he’d just been in another part of the world and living under another name, that would’ve been one thing, but lying in a coma for a century only to wake up and barely remember the explosion, let alone the time lost, is a whole other situation.

“This kind of danger is different, Steve. It’s on the level of Ares kind of different.”

At the mention of Ares, Steve’s eyes darken a little, and he grits his teeth for a moment. “Ares. Right. I remember him. Right before I jumped into the plane, I saw him up in the sky. 

“That’s the level of danger the League deals with. The whole reason Clark, Bruce, and I even found each other in the first place was because a nearly indestructible monster with all of Clark’s powers and more went on a rampage in the city. Thousands dead. Clark included, for a little while.”

“Which one is Clark?” Steve tries to remember if she’s mentioned his name to her before.

“The alien.”

“Alien. Right. Yeah. Alien.” He clears his throat. “So he died?”

“For a little while,” she repeats. “But his family was put in danger because of who they were to him. His mother nearly died that night, and his love has been threatened numerous times. So I’m afraid for you to become too wrapped up in the League and what we do. If someone were to capture you because of who you are to me, then they could torture you for information.”

“Diana, I’ve been doing things like this for my entire adult life,” he says quietly, putting his hand under her chin so he can look her straight in the eye. “I wish I could tell you that all you had to do was wrap me up in a blanket, and I’d be happy and safe waiting for you to come home, but I can’t be that guy.”

Diana bites the inside of her lip as she listens to him. She knows he’s right—damn it all, she knows he’s right, but she doesn’t want to admit it. If she admits she’s being too protective of him, then she’ll have to loosen up, and loosening up could mean putting him in danger, and putting him in danger could mean his death. More than anything, she wants to tell him he could be that guy if he tried for her, but she can’t disrespect him in such a way. She loves and respects him far too much to belittle him.

“I know,” she whispers. “I know. But I can’t…there’s this…this _feeling_ in the pit of my stomach…and whenever I look at you, it’s like I’m seeing your face that last time before you left. I remember what it was like to lose you, and I never want to feel that way again, Steve. More than anything, I’m afraid. I’m…I’m terrified of losing you, and the thought of even letting you out of my sight fills me with the fear of not being able to save you if something were to happen.”

“Diana…hey, look at me. I’m not going anywhere.” He looks at her as sincerely as he had when he’d begged her to come with him right after she’d killed Ludendorff. “I’m not. It’s a little harder for me to get hurt or sick these days, but I promise you, I’m not going anywhere as long as I can help it. And for right now, I’m right here beside you, and I love you.”

She loses her breath in the back of her throat when she hears him say those three little words, and she nods to show she understands. “Just…I need a little patience to get past the fear I’m going to lose you if I look away. A little time and a little patience.”

“I can give you that.” Steve strokes her hair gently and smiles so beautifully she half-wonders if she’s died and gone to Elysium herself. “As much time and patience as you want. And just so you know, you never have to worry about saving me. I know you’ll always be there just as you always have been.”

“Pulling you out of the sea,” she murmurs with a tiny smile playing across her lips. 

“That's right. You were my guardian angel even then.”

Diana sighs and leans her forehead against his shoulder for a brief moment, feeling and sounding as tired as she looks. “I wish everything were easier and the answers clearer, but no matter how hard I try to make sense of everything that’s happened, none of it gets any less murky.”

Steve goes still, and then he steps back, staring intently at her. “Like you’re looking through water, and you can see what’s on the other side, but you can’t see it completely.”

“Yes,” Diana agrees with a grateful smile. She notices the laser focus stare of Steve’s eyes, and she frowns, letting go of one of his hands to touch his cheek. “Steve? What is it?”

Fear rushes through her again as she anticipates another attack of whatever it was that had hit him before, and her pulse rises. She’s about to call for Bruce when Steve snaps out of it and snaps his fingers.

“That’s it!” he exclaims. “That’s what I saw! Murky water. I could see her—the woman—whoever was speaking—I could see her on the other side, but I couldn’t really _see_ her, you know? It was like—like when you’re in dark water, and it’s rippling, and you can see something’s in front of you, but there’s just too much rippling, and there’s too much dark.”

Diana’s ears prick up at the mention of the water, and her grip on his hand becomes tighter. “Water? Dark water?”

Pressing his lips together in a thin white line, he nods. “Yeah. It was dark.”

“What kind of dark? Dark lighting or the water itself was dark?”

“The water itself.”

Diana’s heart jumps, and she swallows, shaking her head. “No. No.”

“Diana, what is it?”

“Dark water.”

Steve takes her face in his hands, redirecting her worried gaze back to him. “Diana, talk to me. What is it? What does that mean?”

She swallows and looks into his eyes. “I think I know who you saw.”

* * *

Amanda Waller knows the importance of time, especially when it comes to wasting time. There are moments when biding one’s time is essential, and then there are moments when the longer one waits, the less likely a successful strike will be. She hasn’t quite made up her mind on what she thinks her current situation is—if she’s wasting precious hours the longer she waits or if she’s strengthening her chances of success. And if there’s anything Waller hates more than waiting, it’s not knowing.

As she’s quickly learned, the occult relies on not knowing—or at least knowing a little but never enough. There’s always one more piece of the puzzle to uncover, and that means Waller’s only gotten herself wrapped up in a dangerous battle that’s disguised itself as a clever game. She would be lying if she said she didn’t like the danger of it all. With this job, she gets a rush when it comes to being this close to lethal people but walking away from them without a single scratch on her. She likes skirting death and looking it in the eyes, controlling it.

Maybe that’s why she’s taken the path she has, she wonders to herself as she gazes at the bowl of water on her desk. Maybe she’s just looking for more ways to defeat death and shove her vitality in the afterlife’s face. Maybe. But there’s no sense in wondering about it now. All she has to focus on in the moment is what comes next, and for that, she’ll need to get in touch with her contact.

“Any minute, now,” she murmurs to herself, eyes glued to the bowl. “Any. Minute.”

* * *

When Diana and Steve rush past Bruce outside the lab, Diana calling over her shoulder to him that they need to go to his library, Bruce knows she has a lead. He falls into place beside Steve, easily keeping pace with the pilot, and he looks over at him. “What has she found?”

“She has an idea who it was I saw,” Steve replies. “She’s going to check some of your books on Greek mythology to either confirm or rule out the hypothesis.”

“Not books,” Diana corrects. “Records. _My_ records.”

“Diana’s done a bunch of archival work in preserving Amazonian history,” Bruce explains. “We keep them safely protected in the library. The library that’s in the cave, that is.”

“Now isn’t the time to show off how many libraries you have, Bruce,” Diana half-heartedly chastises, and she makes a sharp turn into a room. Feeling their eyes on the back of her head, she goes over to one of the locked cases and punches in a code. The drawer pops open, and she reaches in and pulls out several large objects wrapped in paper.

“Acid-free paper to preserve the books,” Bruce says, meriting a mildly annoyed glance from Diana.

“You don’t need to mansplain to him, Bruce. Or should I call batmansplaining?”

Bruce smirks and snorts out the closest thing to a laugh Steve has heard since he’s known the guy. “Cute.”

Diana pauses in the middle of her rustling and gestures to the large open box behind her. “Are you going to be useful and help me, or am I just doing this all on my own?”

Steve instantly jumps forward with all the ease of a soldier who’s preparing himself for the thick of the battle. In that moment, Bruce can see the man Diana had first met and eventually fallen in love with. “What can I do?”

“Gloves.” Diana produces a small basket of white gloves from another drawer and sets it down on one of the tables closest to her. “When handling the books, you have to wear the gloves at all times. What we’re looking for is anything to do with Persephone, Hades, and the Underworld. That includes anything about the River Styx, Cerberus, Elysium, the Asphodel Meadows, the Mourning Fields…look for anything at all like that.”

“The Underworld,” Bruce repeats, putting on the gloves as Diana ordered. “You think this has something to do with the Underworld?”

“Steve mentioned seeing dark water. How was it you described it?” she asks without looking at Steve as she starts skimming the open book in front of her with focused eyes.

“It’s like I was in an ocean of dark water all around me and looking up at someone who was at the surface,” Steve clarifies. He flexes his hands in the gloves and goes to the box. “Any of these books?”

“Any of them. Just make sure you’re careful handling the paper.”

“Dark water is a connection to the Underworld,” Bruce thinks aloud. “A woman’s voice and a face that remains unclear.”

“Persephone is Hades’s wife. Hades is the god of the Underworld, god of the Dead. He kidnapped Persephone and made her his wife against her will, and she remains stuck in the Underworld,” Diana explains.

“She’s supposed to come up once a year for months at a time, though,” Bruce protests with a frown. “That’s what Greek mythology uses to explain Spring.”

“She _used_ to.” Diana drags a finger down the line she’s reading and mutters something in irritation under her breath. “He stopped allowing it when she tried to escape permanently from him. As you can imagine, Hades didn’t take kindly to that, and so she’s locked down there forever while her mother Demeter brings the Spring season every year so as not to alarm mankind.”

“Jesus,” Steve sighs. “That’s complicated.”

Diana laughs mirthlessly and half-shrugs. “Welcome to Greek mythology." 

“And what exactly are we looking for?” Bruce unwraps the large book he’s lifted out of the protective box and opens it. Ever since he’s gotten to know Diana, he’s brushed up a lot on his Greek mythology so that he could be prepared for anything from her world coming to attack this world. However, he realizes as he looks at all of the words in front of him, as he listens to Diana recount the hidden story that lies behind the façade humans know and are taught, he’s in over his head. Nothing he read could have prepared him for something like this, and Bruce will be damned if he’s ever unprepared for a thing in his life.

“Anything. But specifically any spells or rituals that have to do with—“ She stops and looks at Steve with huge eyes. “Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end, one hundred years to make amends. A blood price paid, Her pain awakes the Goddess who no longer needs to wait.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard. What _we_ heard,” Steve confirms.

“Diana?” Bruce asks, seeing the wheels turn in her head. He knows this look very well, and he waits for her conclusion.

“O Zeus,” she whispers. “O Zeus, no.”

“Diana.”

“It’s a prophecy,” she says, her voice feeling caught in her lungs. “How did I…no. Alright. Look for anything to do with the Underworld and Persephone. I mean _anything_ about the Underworld that might relate to the words we heard or what we’ve experienced since Steve’s woken up.”

“A prophecy,” Steve repeats, looking at Diana with an unabashedly bewildered expression painted across his features.

“Prophecies are rarely good. And the mention of blood?” Diana makes a quiet sound. “Even worse.”

“Do you know what this prophecy could be about?”

“No idea. But please. Please look. The sooner we can find information, the sooner we can solve this, ok? I’ll answer any questions soon, but now, please just look.”

Steve longs to ask her the other hundred questions he has coursing through his head, but he remembers her admitting how afraid she is of losing him, and he sees the worry on her face as she hunts through the book sprawled out in front of her under the lights. The best way he can help and get closer to the answers is to look through the books to find anything, and so he buckles down and looks. If that’s what Diana needs from him, he sure as hell will do it.

* * *

“Diana,” the goddess murmurs. “I remember her as a child.”

“As do I.”

“It has been a long time since I have seen her. I wonder if she will remember me.”

“Hippolyta would never neglect to tell her the stories of where she came from.”

“You surprise me, my King. Rarely do you refer to the Amazons as coming from us.”

“Not us.” The god’s voice is sharp. “Not you and I. _We_ had nothing to do with the creation of the Amazons.”

“I am the goddess of creation, my love. All creation stems from me.”

“Not that creation.”

“Yes, love. That creation, too.”

“How much longer, my Queen?”

“Not much longer. I swear.”

Persephone smiles and closes her eyes, lifting her face up as if she were basking beneath the warm glow of the sun she’s missed.   _Soon_ , she thinks. _Soon._


	10. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, and morethanpixels for commenting!
> 
> This fic is now rated E. Take that as you will.
> 
> As always, I crave validation via feedback and would love to hear your thoughts! (Seriously, reading y'all's thoughts absolutely makes my day and tells me that I don't completely suck lol so thank you to everyone who's been feeding my vanity) Enjoy :)

Hours later, Diana’s ready to scream from frustration. None of them has been able to find a lead on the prophecy or even Persephone herself. At least, nothing that they don’t already know. After swearing in Greek under her breath every now and then for the past number of hours, Diana forces her eyes away from the book in front of her and closes them, rubbing them with the backs of her knuckles.

“Nothing,” she says flatly. “All this time and nothing.”

“Research isn’t always as easy as flipping through some books for a few hours and then finding what you’re looking for,” Bruce replies without looking up from the pages he’s at.

“Thank you, Bruce. I wouldn’t have known that otherwise.” Her voice drips with dry humor, meriting a glance up from the billionaire before he goes back to finishing the pages he’s studying.

“Where do we look next?” Steve asks and closes the book he’s just completed. His eyes are rimmed with a slight pinkness as a sign of irritation from the dust between the pages as well as the exertion of looking at something for a long period of time. “If there aren’t answers here, where do we look for answers?”

“I’ve got some records in The Louvre,” Diana thinks out loud. “I could go access them and see if there’s anything there that could give any kind of a clue.”

Steve glances at Bruce and then back at Diana. “The Louvre. Paris.”

“Yes. Paris.” Diana doesn’t quite get what Steve’s hesitant reaction is about, and she tilts her head to the side as she tries to understand. “What is it?” 

“Just…Paris’ll be different, right? From how I remember it?”

“Paris is _completely_ different,” Diana stresses. Seeing his overwhelmed face, her eyes soften, and she can’t keep her sympathy from rising up and showing itself across her features. “We’ll get you used to all of it. Whether it’s here in Gotham or in Paris. Any questions you have, I’ll answer them and help you adjust.”

Steve’s face turns unreadable, but he vaguely nods. How does he tell her that the last time he saw France, it had had trenches stretching across it for miles? That bodies of young men had been stacked in piles, strewn off to the side without a care, and buried in halfhearted makeshift graves? How does he tell her that the horrors she’d seen during the War are only a handful of horrors he’d seen throughout the years? His throat tightens, but he makes himself nod again so she doesn’t think something is wrong still. “Right. Yeah. Paris. It’ll be interesting.”

“I’ll have Alfred get the plane ready,” Bruce says, already starting to replace the books in their acid-free paper to put back in the vault.

Diana frowns, her lips pressing together in confusion as she watches him. “The plane?”

“We’re taking my plane,” Bruce clarifies, to which Diana quickly shakes her head.

“No. No, Bruce, you’re staying here in Gotham.”

He pauses then and gives her a look that shows he clearly doesn’t consider that to be an option. “The hell I am.”

“If I need your help, I’ll call you, but I need you to stay in Gotham,” she insists. “Let me handle this. Whatever’s going on is something I need to take care of, but if I find I need backup, you’ll be the first person I call. Ok?”

Bruce’s jaw shifts to the side. “I don’t like this, Diana. What if it’s too late?”

“No.” Her voice grows harder, and her eyes flash in that way they do whenever she means it. “This is my puzzle I need to solve. Mine. I promise you that if I need you or the League, I’ll call you for help, but until then, let me do this.”

As Steve watches Bruce and Diana stare each other down, he’s reminded of her unwavering dedication. Not that he’s doubted her conviction here in modern times, but there’s something terribly comforting and familiar in the way she refuses to back down from her stance. It hits him then that she looks just as she had in the trenches in Veld, those goddamn trenches where he’d been ready to turn his back on the innocent people she’d been so determined to save.

“At least take my plane,” Bruce says, finally backing down a little. “Let me help you at least that much.”

Diana hesitates as she considers the offer, and then she nods. “Alright. But I won’t need it tonight. I’d like to pack some things and get everything in order here before I leave.”

“Ten tomorrow morning?”

“Ten tomorrow morning,” Diana agrees, wrapping her book up and putting it in the vault before shutting it. Her gaze drifts over to Steve, and her heart skips all over again. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to seeing him in the flesh. After so many years of trying to forget the pain she’d experienced after his death, he’s here, and the gaping wound in the cavity of her chest caused by his absence is suddenly raw and bleeding again.

She used to feel guilty over the fact that she mourned Steve more than she mourned the loss of her homeland. She’s missed Themyscira, and admittedly, there have been moments when she’s been so homesick she thought her heart would rip in two, but between the sorrow she still feels over Themyscira and the sorrow she’d felt over Steve’s death are incomparable. As much as Themyscira had been paradise, and she’d been with women she knew and trusted, the world of mankind had brought her a new kind of enlightenment she never would have known otherwise. How could she have stayed on the island and gone her whole life without knowing there was another beautiful world out there?

Humans aren’t as good as she’d once thought them to be, but they’re also not the monsters she’d labeled them during a brief moment of horror. In a way, there’s something remarkably pure about humans having the right to choose their own destinies, and whenever she thinks about that, she thinks about Steve. In her mind’s eye, she can still see the look on his face as he’d stolen one last look of her before running off to the plane. Right then and there, he’d chosen his destiny, and he’d chosen to walk down a path of light and love. Those choices, more than anything else, are the choices Diana relies on whenever she finds herself losing hope in the ugly darkness around her. It’s not Themyscira that reminds her of what she has to lose if she gives up—it’s Steve.

Diana blinks quickly and tears her eyes away from him as she readies herself for departure. “I’ll call you if anything changes between now and then.”

Bruce nods back at her and doesn’t say anything, but his eyes slide over to Steve as if he’s half-expecting him to make some kind of trite remark. However, Steve just nods at him in respectful acknowledgement, his meaning clear in their silence: Diana will be in good hands, though God knows she certainly doesn’t need someone else’s hands to guarantee her own safety.

He and Diana walk upstairs where Alfred has a car waiting for them, and they quietly slide into the backseat. Neither of them speaks the rest of the ride back to Diana’s apartment, nor does either of them reach for each other or initiate some kind of touch. They’re both just quiet. When Alfred reaches the apartment building, Diana murmurs a soft thanks to him and rests her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment, and then she’s out of the car and waiting for Steve.

They still don’t speak as they walk into the building and into the elevator, and the gentle beep of the button Diana presses to go to her floor is the only sound between them. After a couple silent seconds, Steve speaks.

“What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t look at him but rather down at the floor, as if she’s been expecting to be caught, and now the other shoe has finally dropped. “I’m worried. That’s all.”

“It’s nothing we can’t fix.”

That grabs her attention, and her eyes dart up to meet his. “Steve, you remember Ares. If we’re dealing with Persephone…I can only imagine how that can go.”

“Why? What’s her deal?” Steve’s brows furrow together, and he turns to face her a little more directly as he leans into the elevator wall.

“She…” Diana pauses and licks her lips as she concentrates on creating the right explanation. “She loves beginnings. After all, she’s the goddess of Spring, and there’s nothing she loves more than watching everything old become something new. Something reborn. But when Hades took her to the Underworld, she was forced to live in a world of nothing but death. Death, judgment, and an eternal sentence of either reward or punishment. For the goddess of life beginning, that kind of sentence is traumatic, especially when the one allowance to the world above was taken away from her. If my suspicions are correct…if this is Persephone’s doing…she has thousands of years of anger and pain to release.”

Steve is quiet then, and Diana watches him come to terms with this new information she’s just given him. She wishes she had better stories to tell him, stories of goddesses who embrace love and understanding in all aspects of their lives. Suddenly, she realizes that what she feels now is what Steve had felt on top of the tower after she’d killed Ludendorff. He’d wanted to protect her from the cruel realities of the world, but he’d respected her too much to tell her lies about people truly being good at heart. Now she’s the one wanting to protect him from the wrath her world can produce, and she knows she isn’t capable of lying to him any more than he’s capable of lying to her.

A lump rises in her throat, and she fights to swallow it back down. She can’t lose her cool now. Not when Steve is depending on her to help him uncover the truth. Not when she’s done so well at being ok since his death. So instead of giving in to the rubbery ball of emotion that seems stuck in the back of her esophagus, she keeps her face relaxed so as not to give anything away.

“What do you think she wants?” Steve asks, the sincere desire for her opinion evident in the intensity of his voice and his gaze.

Diana shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s difficult to say.”

“But what do you think?” he repeats. “What’s your theory?”

She wants to tell him she has no clue as to a theory even, but that wouldn’t be the truth, and she wants nothing more than to give him the truth at all times. She bites at the inside of her cheek for a moment, and then she gives. “Persephone wants to be back in the world above. Considering that she was kidnapped and taken to the Underworld and then was caught trying to run away from Hades for good, she doesn’t want to remain with the dead any longer.”

“So you think she’s coming back here?” Steve asks, the wheels in his brain turning.

Diana nods and sighs heavily. “It’s just a theory. The kind of power it would take to make something like that happen…to defeat power from a god as strong as Hades…it would require a spell stronger than anything I’m familiar with. That would also explain why it wasn’t in any of the books we looked at when we were at Bruce’s. A spell of that strength wouldn’t be accessible to just anyone.”

The elevator reaches the floor of Diana’s apartment and quietly dings as it opens. Side by side, she and Steve walk down the hall until they reach the door belonging to her.

“And what you have at The Louvre might have it,” Steve says, a straight forward statement rather than a question.

Diana unlocks the door and punches in a security code before turning to look at him. “The Louvre has some pieces that are more than just art, but they don’t know it. To them, they have an extensive collection of ancient Greek vases and bowls with prayers written in lost languages on the side. But as the curator of the Ancient Civilizations collection and as an Amazon who’s fluent in hundreds of modern _and_ ancient languages, I know the significance of the collection.”

“Have you read them? Do you know if there’s one about the prophecy we heard?”

She gives him a dry smile over her shoulder as they cross into the apartment and toward the kitchen. “You’d be surprised by the things I have to do that otherwise occupy my time.”

“Yeah, I really have no idea what people do in museums,” Steve admits with a slightly sheepish shrug. He watches her get a fresh pot of coffee going, and he leans against the counter of the island in the center of her spacious kitchen.

Diana laughs, the first time in several hours he’s heard that gorgeous sound, and she shakes her head in amusement. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve been busy from the second I was hired there to the second I got on that plane to come here. Even then, I’ve been putting out fires left and right as best as I can over email and phone calls, so no, I haven’t had time to explore the writing on the vases. And since no one else knows what they say, I’m not neglecting a part of my job by not taking the time to know.”

“No, I want to be bored,” Steve protests. “I want to know about your job. Everything. The big details and the little details and everything in between.”

With the coffee brewing, Diana crosses to the other side of the island and leans on the counter opposite of Steve. “That’s sweet of you. But I’d like to think there are more interesting things about me than my job.”

“Probably,” Steve concedes with a small shrug. “But I want to know everything. I don’t want to know just the best parts of you. I want to know the worst, the boring, the mundane, the ordinary, and whatever adjectives you can come up with. If it has to do with you, I want to know how it relates to you. It’s just…we don’t really know much about each other, do we?”

This same thought has occurred to Diana before in the past, and she’s always left a little uncomfortable whenever she thinks about it. Despite how much she’s driven by her emotions, she’s also smart. She’s aware of the fact that falling in love with someone she doesn’t know isn’t the smartest of things to do, and yet, she’s never been able to deny her feelings about Steve. Even though she doesn’t know his favorite food or what he’s allergic to, she can’t deny that she loves him madly.

She slowly replies, “No. We don’t.”

“So I want to learn everything I can about you.”

“And what if you learn something you don’t like?” she challenges. She means it to be more of a flirtatious question than anything, but in the process of her words bouncing around her brain to being vocalized by her mouth, it comes out sounding half-flirtatious, half-serious.

Steve considers this question, tilting his head to the side and looking up toward the ceiling a bit as he thinks. “I’d say you’re perfect, but you’d deny it, and we could spend several hours or days arguing about whether or not you’re perfect. But if I learn something I don’t like, I know it won’t be enough to make me stop loving you, nor will it be enough to make me think you’re any less of a good person than you are.”

Diana blinks and then lowers her eyes to the counter, feeling strangely exposed in front of him. For someone she’s just admitted to not knowing much about at all, she feels the odd sensation that he might know her better than either of them realizes melting into her skin. She clears her throat softly, eyes still cast downward. “And you say we don’t know each other.”

“I still want to know the parts of you I currently don’t know,” he says sincerely.

She lifts her eyes up to look over at him, and she feels her breath catch. For the love of Aphrodite, she’ll never get used to just how beautiful he truly is, she thinks to herself. Of all the men she could’ve been exposed to for the very first time, she’d had her first face to face experience with the one who has the face of a clear winter sky and the heart of roaring rapids. No matter how excellent her memory is—and she has an _excellent_ memory—she’s never been able to remember just how stunningly gorgeous he was in actuality.

“I want that, too,” she replies, her voice quiet. “I want to know everything about you that I never got to know back before you—“ She stops herself before she mentions the “d” word. She knows it’s ridiculous to still be hung up on such a simple little word that no longer has any meaning in regards to Steve’s status, but she still can’t bring herself to say it. Especially to his face. “Back when we first met.”

“There’s not much to know about me,” Steve says with some feigned modesty that makes her smile and mean it.

“You were a spy! You saw all kinds of things I never got to. I refuse, Steve Trevor, to believe that there’s not much to know.” She pauses and bites at her lip for a brief second. If she notices how that tiny lip bite affects Steve and makes his eyes flick down to her mouth, she doesn’t make any indication. “If that were true, I wouldn’t be in love with you.”

Steve’s face floods with an emotion Diana can’t quite identify, and when he speaks, his voice is almost inaudible. “I would really like to kiss you right now.”

She looks directly at him and nods. “I would really like you to kiss me.”

He waits for her to make the move, and she does. Her footsteps leave no sound as she crosses toward him, and the only sound either of them can hear is the coffee pot. As she slows to a stop in front of him, eyes lifted up and body open, she remembers the night they’d shared together in Veld. He’d looked at her in quite the same way he’s looking at her now—awe, adoration, surprise, and wonder. He looks at her with wonder.

“Tell me again,” he requests, his voice a low rumble just inches away from her lips.

She could play coy and pretend she doesn’t know what he means, but coy isn’t an angle she likes or feels comfortable using. Keeping her eyes level with his, she doesn’t move toward him or away from him. “I’m in love with you.”

Steve visibly swallows, and Diana wants to ask what it is he’s choking back down, just as she’d choked down her own emotions earlier. She wants to know what’s going on in his head and his heart, and she can’t find the words to speak and tell him so. Slowly, like he’s afraid she’ll run away if his moves are too sudden, he lifts a hand to her cheek.

“I remember this,” she whispers as she closes her eyes. “I remember you doing this in Veld. When we were in the room at the inn after everyone else had gone to sleep. You stayed behind.”

“I did.” Steve looks down at her lips, not trying to conceal it this time. “I knew I should’ve left, but when you looked at me…”

“I wanted you to stay,” Diana finishes for him. She puts her hand over his and opens her eyes, looking at him with fire locked into her gaze. “I want you to stay now.”

He gives her the smallest nod, and that’s the cue Diana needs. She leans forward and presses her lips against his in a warm, needy kiss. They’ve shared kisses since Steve has been discovered alive, meaningful kisses that made Diana’s heart swell and ache with the memory of the kisses they’d exchanged before. _What does before mean?_ Diana wonders. _Before he died? Before you learned how to live in a frightening new world without him? Before he came back into your life as quickly as he’d entered it the first time?_ But this kiss is different from all the others.

She steps closer to him and feels him wrap his arms around her waist to pull her right up against him. Deepening the kiss, she puts her hands at the base of his jaw where the tips of her fingers brush over the short stubbly hair that finish out the bottom of his haircut. His mouth is hot, but Diana loves fire.

“Diana,” he breathes in between kisses. He starts to say something else, but whether he cuts himself off so he can kiss her or Diana does it for him, neither of them knows. They just know that there’s no longer any sense in being apart from each other. In the background, the coffee pot signifies that it’s done, but Diana barely registers it in her brain. How can she think about coffee when she has this man in her arms?

“Steve,” she gasps out as her hands fumble at the buttons on his shirt. “My room. My room.”

She expects him to pause and ask if she’s sure, but he surprises her by instantly nodding and pressing her against him. Stumbling and lacking grace, she doesn’t pull away from him as they make their way out of the kitchen and down the hall to her room. She doesn’t remember reaching the doorway or even the moment when the back of Steve’s legs collide with the edge of the bed, but she remembers tumbling down over him.

Her heart is a timpani beneath her ribs as she tugs harder at the buttons. Part of her wants to make some kind of joke about how this time around, she knows what she’s doing when it comes to being intimate with a man, but speaking would require her to stop kissing him, and at this point, she’d rather die than to lose the taste of his tongue on her lips. She presses herself harder against the front of his body and is rewarded by the gentle vibration of a moan in the back of his throat.

“Diana,” he pants, his hands squeezing her thighs. “Diana.”

Every time he says her name, she has a religious experience. The consonants and vowels that make up her name sound different when he says them, like he’s praying to her rather than just addressing her. Diana of Themyscira is a demi-goddess, but she’s not sure anyone has ever prayed to her until now. When those three syllables spill from between his lips and into the reverberating air cocooning around them, she feels it deep within her heart the way she imagines being prayed to would feel like.

She lets him sit up when she has his shirt all the way unbuttoned, and he lifts up, shrugging his shirt off and his hands reaching for hers before she can think to speak. It’s only a matter of seconds before her shirt is plucked from her body and deposited off to the side somewhere. She goes back in to kiss him and clutch him, but she notices he’s gone still. Suddenly, Diana worries she’s pushed him into this before he was ready, and she pulls back to look at him. “Steve? Steve, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he says softly, unable to look away from her. Slowly, he inhales and then exhales as he takes in the sight of her with her shirt off. “You’re…wow.”

“You’re ok?” She ducks her head down to catch his eye and make him look at her. “This is all right?”

He nods quickly, blinking several times. “Yeah. God, yeah. I’m just…you’re…wow.”

Diana’s first instinct is to laugh in amusement, but the way he says it doesn’t nod toward humor at all. If anything, it’s a continuation of the prayer he’d started from the moment he said her name. She’s quiet as she watches him explore her with just his eyes. The bra she wears now is different from the kind of undergarments he was used to in 1918, and a lesser man might show open confusion toward it, but the only emotion Steve seems to feel toward her is pure admiration.

Silent, Diana reaches around behind herself and unhooks her bra, letting the straps slip down her shoulders and then her arms. When they can’t travel down any farther, she lets the supportive garment fall forward, and just like that, the top half of her is bared to him. Steve makes a noise that gets lost in the tension of the moment, and he just stares. Diana watches him, watches how he looks at her and how his breathing changes. Her eyes are drawn to his chest, and she sees the scars that web out to form a map of his body, a sight she hasn’t let escape her memory. She starts to reach for him but then pauses, unsure if he’s ok with her touching them.

“May I?” she asks, searching his face. Steve blinks and looks up at her face as if remembering she has one.

“Hmm?” he asks.

“May I? Touch you?” She indicates how and where she wants to touch him. He glances down at his body where he sees his own scars. He lets out a little breath, a self-deprecating kind of laugh.

“Those aren’t some of my nicer features,” he says in an attempt to joke.

“They’re beautiful.” She longs to press her fingertips to them, to read the stories they’ve etched into his body the way his name had been etched into a wooden cross in a cemetery of fallen soldiers in Europe.

“I…If you want to.” Steve doesn’t feel uncomfortable per se, but he’s not used to a woman finding these particular features of his body to be beautiful. No one has ever said anything about them, but he’s definitely caught expressions of shock and even pity, and if there’s anything he hates, it’s someone pitying him. So when Diana’s hands make contact with his bare chest, he feels like he’s Lazarus, truly rising from the grave the way it’s described in the Bible he’d read as a child.

“Beautiful,” Diana murmurs. Her hands drift down to a slash on his ribcage, and she smiles—the woman actually _smiles_. “I remember this one. We were in Veld when I saw it up close like this.”

“Still a bayonet wound,” Steve replies rather lamely. He wishes he had something more charming or heroic to say, but he doesn’t. All he has are soldier’s stories that aren’t anywhere near as glamorous as the propaganda all throughout America and even Europe had portrayed in 1918.

“Still beautiful.” Her fingers are light and dance over his skin like ghosts. He lets her push him back onto the bed and explore his body further. Starting at the shrapnel mark by the side of his neck, she makes her way down past the tanks and the mortar shells, past the trenches and barbed wire. She moves through his history as easily as she’d crossed No Man’s Land, and Steve is damned if he doesn’t find her any less beautiful than he had then.

At one point, Diana kisses a scar on his chest. She lingers there for a moment and closes her eyes as she pictures him as a soldier in his younger years before she’d known him. She’s seen a picture—the one on the wall in France—and it’s so easy to imagine him as a young man thrilled to contribute to the fight for peace, to fight so that others could live. When she opens her eyes, she finds him staring at her with that same wide-eyed look.

“Jesus,” he mutters. Diana goes to ask him what he means, but the heated look in his eyes says it all. Leaning forward, she kisses him again and takes his hand to bring it to her breast. When his hand touches her soft skin, he lets out a gentle moan as if he’s the one receiving pleasure, and Diana swallows the small roll of sound down into her throat. She gently encourages him to continue touching her as she kisses him, and it isn’t long until she finds herself in his lap while he buries his head against the tepid skin of her chest.

She doesn’t typically think of herself as a moaner in bed, but she can’t suppress the urge to vocalize how she feels as soon as his tongue flicks out across her nipple. He’d done this to her in Veld, too, but this time around is just _different_. Diana doesn’t know how because their hands and their mouths are the same that had touched each other once before, but it’s so, so different.

The next few moments go by in a swirling blur, and Diana moves away just long enough so she can push the clothing on her lower half off. As soon as she pulls away, she longs to go back to him, her body craving his with a desperate but delicious kind of ache that makes her feel alive in ways she hasn’t felt in an embarrassingly long time. Steve’s physical response to her nakedness is just one victory in a sea of victories she’s experiencing today, and she sits back.

“Good Lord, Diana,” Steve says as he looks at her with wild blue eyes. “Good God.”

She waits patiently while he stares. Nudity isn’t something she’s embarrassed by, though she’s learned that in the world of mankind, women commonly feel embarrassment toward their naked bodies. But for Diana, being naked is something that’s natural. On Themyscira, she’d grown up learning that fewer things are more natural and beautiful than the naked body, and she feels no shame or embarrassment in how she looks. Of course, she’s aware that her body is very different from other women’s what with her life as an Amazon and a superhero, but she doesn’t feel any shame in those aspects, either.

Steve remains unable to look away, which makes Diana’s heartbeat speed up. Even though he isn’t speaking, she knows he finds her beautiful. She knows just by looking at him and seeing how his cheeks are slightly flushed pink that he wants her every bit as bad as she wants him. One half of her wants to grab at him and give them both what they want, but the other half stops her—this is something Steve _needs_. He needs to look at her and to process her, to admire her. He needs this experience right here, and so Diana will not rush him until he’s ready.

“Good God,” he repeats under his breath, his eyes sweeping back up the length of her body, and he reaches for her. She kisses him hard and even bites at his bottom lip just a little bit as she takes his hand. Still kissing him, she places his hand on her inner thigh and slides it up until he’s touching her directly between her legs. Steve inhales sharply, and his fingers twitch against her with the desire to feel her.

Normally, Diana would love for him to touch her until she was so worked up she couldn’t stand it anymore, but today, that’s not what she wants. She lets him continue touching her as she pushes at the waistband of his pants. Equal footing is important to her, and she very much wants to be on equal footing with him where she can touch him. In a few fumbles and shifts, his pants and boxers join the rest of their clothes on the floor, and he’s just as bare to her as she is to him.

At this point in her life, Diana’s well acquainted with the penis. She’s been with enough men to be more than confident around one, and she knows she’s good at what she can do. And yet, seeing Steve naked in front of her is like seeing him naked on Themyscira all over again. How fascinated she’d been by him then. She’d seen diagrams and read descriptions of them, but Steve had been the first naked man she’d seen in real life, and she’d been endlessly interested in how unusual it looked. So despite her century of familiarizing herself with a penis from time to time, she finds herself feeling like she had on Themyscira—fascinated and curious.

“May I?” she asks again, needing to check in with him.

Steve’s swift response time—an enthusiastic nod—is comical, but Diana can’t find it in herself to laugh as she reaches to touch him. His hand goes still between her legs when her fingers wrap around him, and he twitches in her palm. Eyes fluttering, Steve tips his head back and lets out a sort of agonized breath.

“Is this all right?” she asks.

“Yes.” He sounds like he’s struggling to breathe. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”

“Good.” She’s careful as she pushes his hand away, and she climbs into his lap. She looks down at the space between their bodies, suddenly and acutely very aware of how naked and physically intimate they are. Heat surges below her navel in a twist of desire, and she moves her hips over his length. Steve is drawn to her, and his hands grab onto her hips, his eyes huge and his jaw clenched tight. Slowly, Diana starts to sink down onto him.

They both go absolutely silent as they experience what it’s like to go through the process of joining together again. Diana presses her forehead against Steve’s, and she squeezes her eyes shut, breathing hard into his mouth. Yes, she’s been with other men, but no man has ever felt like Steve does. Even more than that, no man has ever made her so deliciously aware of what it’s like to accept him between her legs. Her hips ache with the need to take him in quicker and chase after what she longs so deeply for, but she has to consciously tell herself to go slow.

Beneath her, Steve tries to keep his hips from tilting up into her. The urge to bury himself all the way inside her and repeat the motion until he’s released all the pressure building up at the base of his spine is overwhelming, and try as he might, he can’t focus on anything else. An eternity seems to pass before he realizes she’s not moving any longer, and he’s all the way inside her.

Neither of them moves. Neither of them remembers how to breathe.

And then Diana starts to move, and Steve’s grip tightens. Testing the waters, Diana rolls her hips, gasping when she feels him exactly where she wants him. She can’t stop herself from catching his mouth in a hot, wet kiss, and she silently marvels at the contrasting sensations. Against her lips, his mouth is soft and warm, pliable even. Yet between her legs, he’s thick and hard inside her. With each movement of her hips, her body accommodates him more and more until she’s ready to move at the pace she’s been longing for.

It’s no wonder that they’d worked so well on the battlefield together, she thinks. They barely need verbal communication in order to get what they want from each other, and this is a quality that’s transitioned itself even into the bedroom. Every kiss, every touch of their hands or rock of their hips, is like an answer to a prayer Diana didn’t know she’d sent out in the first place. At some point, she murmurs a brief little thing in Greek under her breath as a moan begins to melt out from between her lips.

“Diana…God…fuck…” Steve grunts against her shoulder. She doesn’t remember when he’d started kissing her neck, but she decides she’d keep him there forever if she had the power to. Little swears erupt from the back of his throat as she continues to move over him, each stroke of her hips becoming more frenzied and wild.

She switches from the rolling motion she’s been using over him, and she starts to grind down onto him. Despite herself, she cries out and presses her lips against his temple. He thrusts up beneath her in an instinctive manner, and he pulls back so he can look at her face. Diana knows he’s looking at her because he wants to see how she reacts to what he’s doing, and instead of feeling embarrassed, she feels gorgeous. She feels loved. She feels desired.

Before she can register what’s happening, Steve has rolled them so he’s on top, and her thighs around his waist. His hips move quickly and snap into her, making her cry out again. She thinks she’s saying his name, but she’s not sure. But she holds onto him and looks up at him so she can remember him. That night in Veld had been so different—they’d wanted to take their time but had felt the pressure of the upcoming day hurrying them along. He’d been so sweet and gentle with her out of desire for it to be good for her, and anything beyond sweet and gentle had been something she’d initiated.

Now, though, the urgency that translates itself between their bodies is undeniable. This kind of urgency is different from the night in Veld, but Diana doesn’t know how to label it. She wraps her legs tighter around his powerful hips and loses herself in the rhythm of their sex. Deep inside herself, she feels a quiet tingle start in the base of her hips. She starts to pull her mouth away from Steve’s so she can tell him she’s going to come, but then he pushes inside her so far, her gasping moan cuts the words short.

“Steve,” she breathes, pushing her face into his neck now as his thrusts grow harder and quicker. His heart races above her chest, and she can feel how close he is in the ragged way he buries himself inside her again and again. He’s so thick, so above average, and Diana’s ankles lock as she feels white-hot electricity hit home between her legs. Arching her hips, her head falls back and away from his neck, and she tightens around him—tightens so impossibly much. Through the haze of that same electricity spreading throughout her body from its starting point where Steve is inside her, she feels him swell inside her, hears him choking out that he’s about to come.

“It’s ok,” she whispers and forces herself to keep her eyes open. “It’s ok.”

And at that, Steve can no longer hold back, and he pushes himself as far as he can inside her, and he comes. Diana takes a sharp breath in, feeling him come inside her, and she watches the symphony of emotions that pass over his face. Pleasure, joy, pain, relief, and more mix together in his beautiful, deeply loved features. Through his orgasm, she finds another part of him she hadn’t realized she’d missed. She looks at him with glassy eyes, looks at how his jaw clenches with each final stutter of his hips. She just looks at him and wonders how in the world he’s alive and here and inside her. She wonders how the hell she’s ever supposed to let him go.

Steve drops his forehead to her shoulder with a loud sound, and Diana holds him. For so long, she’s thought of him and loved him. For so long, she’s wished she could tell him she loves him. She’s wished for more time, more kisses, more quiet moments together late at night, and now it hits her that she has all of those things. Closing her eyes and willing herself not to cry, she buries her face into his hair.

She doesn't know if he's come down enough so he can hear her, but she whispers three words to him all the same, needing to say it even if it's just to reassure herself.

“We have time."

 

 


	11. Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Teksasha, Rex501st, pennylane93, and oliviaofthemyscira for commenting! :')
> 
> I promise I'll space the sex out so it isn't in every single chapter, but sometimes Diana and Steve just need to do the sex.
> 
> Thank you for all your sweet comments that definitely make me feel more validated than I deserve, but God knows I appreciate the hell out of it! Anyway, here we go. Enjoy!

Steve is dead. Steve has gone to heaven. Steve doesn’t deserve to be in heaven. But no matter how many times he expects the other shoe to coming tumbling down on top of him, Diana is what is on top of him instead. Still spread out over him and as gloriously naked as he is, her hair hides their faces from the world, and her lips against his are warm and pliable. Softly, she hums a sound of contentment into his mouth, and if he were a greater man, the twinges of desire currently running down into his pelvis would overrule his biology, and above average as he may be, he’s still just a man..

“Wow,” he murmurs when Diana pulls back. He opens his eyes and looks up at her, struck again by just how jaw-droppingly beautiful she is. Her cheeks are pink from both arousal and physical exertion, and she gazes down at him with starry eyes. When she smiles, he swears he dies all over again. Hell, he’ll die a thousand times if it means getting to see that smile.

“Wow,” she says back to him. “I forgot how truly above average you are.”

Steve groans and closes his eyes, turning his head away from her and into the pillow. “God, don’t remind me of that. I can’t believe I had the nerve to say it.”

“I didn’t quite understand what you meant then, but I certainly do now,” she teases as she tries to get him to look at her again. “I thought you meant your entire physicality, though that’s actually true, too.”

“As much as I love reminiscing over our past together, could we change the memory to something a little less…embarrassing?” he requests, but he laughs from the memory and from how obviously Diana’s holding back on her Amazon strength in trying to get him to turn his head back toward her. “Maybe a memory where I was genuinely impressive and not just plumping up my own feathers?”

“It meant you were confident,” Diana says, growing a little more serious but still smiling. “That’s something I liked very much about you right from the start. When I came in, you went to cover up, but you didn’t do it out of embarrassment—you did it out of respect for me.”

“Ok, I was a _little_ embarrassed.”

“But not of your body,” she points out. Propping herself up on his chest so she can see him better, she uses one hand to lazily trace small shapes across his bare skin. “Your confidence was plain to see, and I liked that. You knew your worth as a soldier and a person.”

“Then I’m a hell of a better liar than I thought I was,” he jokes, hoping he sounds more self-deprecating than pathetic. Confusion flickers over Diana’s face, and she frowns in a way that makes Steve want to gently erase all the worry lines peppering her expression.

“You had to be confident in something, right?” she asks. “Not all of that was an act?”

“Yeah, I’m confident about certain things,” he replies honestly. “I know I’m a good spy. Leading comes naturally to me, too. Even when my calls have gotten boys killed…” He trails off, and his gaze grows distant. “I’m good at military things, so yes, the roundabout answer to your question is yes.”

“We can’t protect everyone in times of war,” Diana says softly, refusing to let his little slip away go unnoticed and unaddressed. Her index finger still lightly tracing his skin, she studies him with careful eyes. “That’s something I had to learn the hard way.”

For a moment, Steve thinks she’s talking about the people she’d had to leave behind during the War, but then her face makes him pause as her true meaning hits him. “I didn’t need protecting, Diana. I still don’t.”

His voice is gentle, and he means it to be reassuring more than stubborn, but even to his own ears, he sounds like the kid who insists he isn’t tired while falling asleep in his seat.

“You know I’m never going to stop feeling I could have done something to save you,” Diana says evenly. Eyes intense as ever, she looks at him with as much sincerity and determination as she had right before she’d crossed No Man’s Land. “No matter how many times you tell me it was your choice, and there was nothing I could do, I’m always going to feel we could have saved the War a different way. A way where you didn’t have to die.”

“A way where I didn’t have to lose you for 100 years,” he murmurs.

Diana looks mildly taken aback over the fact that he’s just plucked the words from her brain as easily as he has, but she nods. “Right. Skipping over that part would’ve been nice.”

“Have you ever wondered what that would’ve been like?” Steve asks. Part of him asks because he wants to change the subject—for some reason, Diana feeling guilty over his death makes him uncomfortable—but another part of him asks because he’s genuinely curious.

“What what would’ve been like?” she asks. “What life would’ve been like if you hadn’t died?”

“Yeah.”

Her finger stops for the smallest little second, a record skipping beneath the needle, and then she starts it again. “Yes.”

Steve waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t say anything else. He lifts his eyebrows at her. “Going to share with me what you’ve thought of?”

Diana chews on her lower lip as she considers it. Rationally, she has no doubt that Steve won’t find her foolish or will make fun of her. He respects her mind and her thoughts as much as he respects her ability to charge into battle, her ability to kill gods and live within her own power. However, a piece of heart doesn’t quite want to let these imagined scenarios out just yet. After years of imagining what a future with him would have looked like, her dreams still feel personal and private, things she keeps only for herself.

Steve notices her apprehension, and he gently puts his hand on her wrist. “Hey. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You didn’t pry.” She shakes her head and makes herself stop chewing her lip. “It’s hard to put into words what I’ve thought about. I’ve also never told anyone I thought about that. But then again, I never told anyone except for Bruce about you.”

If the situation were even a hair different, Steve _might_ have felt offended, but he feels anything but when he hears Diana speak of how she hadn’t spoken of him. “The whole time travelling difference thing might give it away, yeah.”

Her smile turns sad now, and she lowers her eyes, her gaze following her finger as she starts tracing little circles over and over. “I wish it were just that. It sounds foolish, but I felt that by keeping you to myself, I was really keeping you with me. If protecting your memory in my head and my heart was the only way for me to keep you safe…I might not have been able to keep you safe when you were alive, but I could keep you safe inside my heart.”

Steve hadn’t expected an answer quite of this depth, and he’s admittedly thrown. She still doesn’t look at him, still chooses to watch the motions of her hand, and it’s then that Steve really takes the time to imagine what these 100 years must have been like for her. Without question, he’s aware of how difficult it must have been to be all alone in a world she still hadn’t experienced to its depths. Add on top of that the fact that the person she’d known and loved the best from this world had been presumed dead…Steve can only begin to imagine the time it had taken her to heal from it. As strong as she is, not even Diana is immune to loss.

And yet, he’s proud of her. He’s so goddamn proud of her he can hardly do anything _but_ be proud of her. Throughout everything she’d lived, she’d made a life for herself and had become successful. She’s powerful and inspiring and everything he’d known she could be and more. She’s lived with her pain for far too long, and Steve wants nothing more than to have the ability to take it all away. To take away the decades of sorrow. The weeks of mourning. The days of feeling alone. If only he were a god to her goddess, he could take away all of it for her.

Moving his hand to the one on his chest, he stills the motion, making her look up at him finally. “You kept me safe, angel. From the moment you pulled me out of the water to the moment I got on the plane. It was you, Diana. All you. If you hadn’t done the things you’d done…if you hadn’t been there…I would’ve been killed a hundred times over. That, I promise you. You’ve always kept me safe.”

“But if I had, then you wouldn’t have gone up in that plane,” she protests.

A smile plays at the corners of Steve’s lips, and he shakes his head. “If you hadn’t dragged my sorry ass out of the water, I never would’ve ended up in those pools on Paradise Island. And if I’d never ended up in them, then there’s no way I could’ve survived a bullet, let alone being blown up in an airplane. Metaphorically and literally— _very_ literally—you kept me safe.”

Diana considers this new idea, looking not wholly convinced but no longer on the verge of self-flagellation the way she was only moments before. “Humans…mankind…the fear of death is so strong. And believe it or not, it’s gotten stronger since 1918 when we first met. People no longer care for their dead. Instead, they pass their family members off to other people and pay them to pump their dead full of chemicals and lock their test tube-like shells in vaults meant to push them as far away from the living as possible. But what I’m afraid of isn’t death. I’m afraid of mortality. I’m afraid of how eternally delicate souls are. How easy it is to drop them and watch them shatter into millions of pieces that I’ll never be able to replace. Humans fear death, but what they should fear instead is their own mortality.”

Steve doesn’t quite know where Diana’s going with this, but he lets her talk, his eyebrows knit together in concentration while he listens. “Aren’t death and mortality the same thing?”

Her mouth quirks up into a tiny half-smile, and she shakes her head. “No. At least, not how I see it. Death is the actual physical cessation of life, but mortality is the concept of death. The intangible idea of it. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of.”

Finally, she laughs and shakes her head. “I’m afraid we’re getting off topic now. You asked for my thoughts, and I gave you a bit more than just thoughts.”

“No. Hey, that’s fine by me,” he protests. “I told you I wanted to know everything about you, and I meant it. Still do. And your views on death and mortality are things I should know, right?”

“But don’t you want to know about what I thought of a world where you hadn’t died more than you want to know my metaphysical ideas of death?” she asks.

“Well, I wouldn’t say _more_.”

She laughs again and pulls her hand out from underneath his, taking the lead as she puts hers on top. “Well, I’m ready to tell you.”

“Then never let it be said I held you back from anything. If I remember correctly, I remember a very distinct declaration that what you do is not up to me.”

“And it still holds true,” Diana says before leaning down and kissing the tip of his nose. “So do you want to hear it or not?”

“Ok, ok! I’m listening.”

“If you’d lived, I used to imagine what it’d be like to do that thing you said people like to do when there aren’t wars. Having breakfast, reading the paper, going to work…all of that. I remembered the look on your face when you’d said it, and so I let myself wonder what it’d be like to have all those things with you. But the realistic part of me…I imagined us still working together the way we did during the War. We made a pretty good team.” She drums her fingers across the backs of his knuckles.

“It would’ve taken a _lot_ for my superiors to let you near anything like that,” Steve says with a frown.

Diana scoffs and gives him a look. “You think I didn’t think that out? I was the only one in that room of people who could read Dr. Maru’s notebook. As much as they wouldn’t want to admit it, they would’ve needed me as a translator, and then whenever you got assigned to different places, I’d go along to do translation. Or at least that’s what the disguise would’ve been.”

Steve blinks. “Huh. You really thought that out.”

“Then while we were out in the field, I’d be able to help the other way. So there you have it. That’s what I would think about whenever I tried to imagine what it would have been like if you’d lived.” She pauses, her eyes searching his face, and her thumb brushes over his hand as a little whispering need to be reminded that he’s real. “At some point, you would’ve gotten old and died, and I would’ve been left alone again, though. In reality and in my imagination, I was always the one left behind.”

“It’s not that way anymore,” Steve says, his voice a gentle comfort through all the piercing turmoil of her emotions. “You’re not going to be the one left behind as long as I can help it.”

“Neither of us can promise that,” she replies with a warm squeeze of her hand. He lifts his palm up and lets their fingers lace together so their palms are pressed. “The most we can promise the willingness to try.”

“Then I promise to try.”

Diana’s smile no longer carries sadness in it as she hears the pure sincerity in his voice. “I know you do, my love.”

He tugs at her hand to silently ask her to come closer, his eyes quiet and pleading. She’s absolutely helpless when he looks at her that way, and she can’t _not_ lower her mouth to his and kiss him with a heated, hungry mouth. Beneath her, he makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, and he twitches against her inner thigh.

“Jesus Christ, Diana,” he whispers.

She takes his bottom lip between her lips, kissing him again. With the hand that isn’t holding hers, he grabs onto her thigh and slides his palm up until he’s near the apex of her thighs. “May I?”

Without pulling away from him, she nods against their kiss, and he brings his fingers to her. When he touches her, she inhales and pulls back just enough so she can get some more oxygen. Those hands of his, those fingers and how they touch…she’s always admired his hands. Now he’s touching her with those hands and rubbing careful circles over her clit. As he continues to touch her, Diana drags her kisses away from his mouth and down toward his jawline. When she reaches a particularly sensitive spot just below his ear where his neck and his jaw join together, his fingers are no longer rubbing over her but are now pushing into her.

She only needs a few brief moments of him pressing inside her before she’s ready for him, gently pushing his hand away so she can shift her hips back. Nipping at his collarbone, she moves her hips and softly sighs as she feels the blunt head of his erection nudge at her. It’s so easy for her to just rock back and let him slide inside her like they’ve done this a thousand times. It’s so easy to just be together and move with each other, that gracefulness they’d had together in battle staying with them. Diana swears she knows when and where he’ll touch her, and with each roll of her hips, she counters every caress.

This time, the sex is slow, lacking the frenzied passion from earlier. Passion still exists between them in a torrent of emotional and physical need, but it allows them to get what they need with an achingly slow burn. Steve’s hand clutches at the small of her back while Diana’s lips fuse to his neck, her hips pursuing the need to ease the intense flicker of desire between her legs.

It’s not long until Diana’s gasps turn into soft moans that fill the air more beautifully than any symphony ever could. Steve wants to spend a day just listening to the sounds she makes in bed, but he’s certain his head would shrivel up into nothingness without a single drop of blood left in his body above his waist. As she changes her movements to a hard, deep grind and makes another soft, needy sound, Steve knows it won’t be much longer.

A matter of seconds pass before Diana’s muscles tense up from her shoulders to her thighs, and she jerks a little with the quiet but hard force of her orgasm. She presses her hips down harder on top of him, and Steve can only groan as he instinctively feels the need to be as deep inside her as possible. With an embarrassing sound that comes out sounding more like choking on food rather than experiencing an orgasm, Steve comes inside her.

The pressure at the base of his spine releases, and the sensation of being drained completely overwhelms him. _This is what heaven is_ , he thinks. _This is what people do when there aren’t any wars to fight. This is what people will die to protect._ Love, intimacy, and human connection. All of these things he feels as he loses himself inside the wet heat of her body, her love. During the War, Steve hadn’t felt anything close to love, intimacy, or human connection whenever he’d left a day’s wages on his pillow for the woman beside him to wake up to. Seeking physical connection with a woman wasn’t something he’d done frequently—only a tiny handful of times, he’d reasoned to himself—as the guilt and the shame that followed were too strong to be overridden by desire. And so he’d learned the hard way that in trying to find something that was real, he hadn’t found anything at all.

But not with Diana. With Diana, he finds everything he’s ever wanted to discover. He finds universes in her touch, galaxies in her kiss. Inside her, he finds heaven, and he finally understands that _this_ is what people fought to protect. They fought, and they died for love, and he had died for Diana to continue to love, even if it meant she would love without him.

“I love you,” he gasps against her shoulder. “Diana. I love you.”

She’s stretched out over him again, her fingers still intertwined with his from when they’d joined together before sex, and she squeezes his hand. Sometimes she doesn’t need words to express how she feels, nor does he need to hear them from her. He knows. More than he knows anything else, he knows she loves him.

* * *

Amanda Waller is drowning. As she looks up through the water at the face above her, she wonders if she’ll ever get used to this sensation of being beneath the surface but still able to breathe. In any other situation, she’d be drowning, her lungs filling with water until there was nothing left but her limp physical form. “When?”

“Tonight.” Persephone leans over the edge of the pond and lets her fingers lightly skim the surface. “He’ll be ready tonight. The real question, however, is whether you are ready.”

“I’m ready,” Amanda replies firmly. “I can promise you that on my end, everything’s ready to go.”

“It is unwise to betray a god, Amanda Waller.” Persephone pauses, her eyes piercing through the calm ripples of the pond. “It is even more unwise to betray a goddess.”

“I wouldn’t ever dream of betraying you. I’m doing for you what you can’t do where you are, and you’re doing for me what I can’t where I am. The deals I make are as solid as my word.”

The goddess smiles, still disturbing the surface with the lazy motions of her hand. It’s been a long time since she’s been above, but she isn’t stupid. She’s more familiar with humans and their ways than she’d like to be, but she’s prepared for the first sign of betrayal from Amanda Waller, head of ARGUS.

“Good,” she murmurs. “Then we are ready for tonight.”

Waller doesn’t break eye contact. “Tonight.”


	12. Below

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to Rex501st, thesinfulship, and LScribbles for commenting!
> 
> This chapter digs a bit more into Greek mythology, and not to keep beating a dead horse, but I do want to stress again that I'm mixing and matching real Greek mythology with my own little twists here and there!
> 
> I hope y'all are still enjoying this! Here we go :)

Amanda Waller is alone in a graveyard with fresh, dark blood dripping down her palm. She stands in the ditch she’s dug, her brow glistening from the effort of hard labor, and she watches her blood drip down into the soil. The thin liquid mixes with the soggy Earth that’s been soaked with milk and honey, and Amanda Waller closes her eyes. Chanting under her breath, she recites the spell Persephone gave her. After all that Waller has worked for, she’s finally getting a step ahead. If this prophecy holds true, and Persephone doesn’t betray her, she’ll have the defense she’s longed to secure for the country—perhaps even the world. She’ll have a position of power to make sure the horrors of the world can never ruin lives and bodies the way she’s seen them capable of doing.

Suddenly, the Earth beneath her feet begins to smoke, and Waller’s heart leaps. The rational side of her tells her she should be frightened, but in reality, she’s anything _but_ frightened. The smoke of lives lost, left to be forgotten in an overgrown graveyard on the outskirts of Gotham’s poisonous city lines, rises up, and Waller feels the thrill of change course throughout her body.

* * *

When Steve drifts off to sleep beside her, his arms tucked warmly around her body, the fact that he’s sleeping in the bed with her instead of on the floor doesn’t escape Diana’s notice. The night before had felt strange but not uncomfortable to have him so close but so far away from her, especially since she’d wanted nothing more than to grasp him to her and hold on tight all night long. But tonight, she’s getting to feel him next to her, his warmth soft and protective as it cocoons her against the solid curves of his body.

Diana doesn’t remember when she falls asleep, too, but before too long, she has fallen into a deep sleep beside him. She’s never been afraid of bad dreams, not even when she’d been plagued by the memory of Steve’s death, of the anguish in her mother’s eyes as she’d said goodbye. Not even destroying her own half-brother makes her fear her nightmares. However, tonight she dreams of something she never has before.

She dreams of ghosts.

One second she’s in a department store trying to find kiwis, and the next second she’s can’t breathe. A frigid invisible hand wraps around her throat, locking her airway so she can neither inhale nor exhale, and her arms reactively thrust forward as if she can push the intangible assailant away. The cold bites through her skin and pierces her bones to the point where she nearly loses focus, but the image of wispy smoke trickling into the space in front of her, slowly solidifying into a person-shaped figure, snaps her back into reality.

The figure doesn’t solidify completely—just enough for Diana to make out its general shape as being like that of a human—but its grip on her throat doesn’t let up. The more Diana fights, the tighter the figure squeezes, its eye sockets leering at her in their emptiness.

Suddenly, Diana jolts awake. She expects to find the figure gone as what happens with dreams when one wakes up, but she’s face to face with those empty, empty eyes.

“Diana,” it speaks in a gravelly voice that resounds through Diana’s brain. “Princess of Themyscira. Daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.”

Borderline frantic, Diana’s hand shoots out to the side of the bed where she keeps her sword tucked out of sight. Her fingers wrap around the worn handle, and she swings it forward. In a smoky flash, the figure disappears, and Diana can breathe once again. Gasping, her lungs struggling to draw in the oxygen she’s been deprived of, she knocks against Steve. Steve. She’s forgotten Steve.

Steve is up in a split second, and if they weren’t being attacked in Diana’s bedroom, Diana would remember the way he immediately hits a defensive position. His fists clench, his eyes are wide and alert, and his body hunkers down. “Diana!”

Her voice remains stuck in her throat as Steve goes to her. Words in all the languages she knows fly through her head at the speed of light, but she still can’t draw enough breath in between choking, agonized coughs to speak. Behind Steve’s head, the figure begins to take shape again, and she points to it for Steve to look. “Steve—move.”

She manages those two words, and then she’s leaping off the bed to land between him and the figure, her sword at the ready. She still hasn’t quite gotten over the choking just yet, but she’s not about to back down. Sword up, she waits for the figure to make a move. Now is the first time she’s really able to get a look at it. With all the expert skill of a warrior who’s been trained her whole life to fight, Diana assesses the figure. Made of smoke. Human features. No eyes, no nose, no discernible hair.

“Diana,” it rasps. “Princess of Themyscira. Daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.”

“Who—who are you?” Diana demands with all the ferocity she can muster up. Even when not at her strongest, she’s still a force to be reckoned with, a hurricane that can dance and destroy with the power of Mother Earth rooting itself within her bones. “How do you know me?”

“You have been summoned,” the figure says in that same voice that sounds like Diana’s brain is being raked over top of a concrete slab. “My king and queen await.”

Steve moves a little closer to Diana, and she widens her stance to keep him covered. The desire to help practically steams off of him, but she will not allow him to help when there’s no reason she can’t have this under control. “Who are you?”

“My king and queen await,” the figure repeats.

“You will tell me who you are.” Diana’s voice hardens as she gets more of her breath back. “Who are your king and queen?”

“I have no name. I am here on behalf of my Lord King Hades and his Lady Queen Persephone.”

For the second time that night, Diana loses her breath. Neither she nor the figure moves in this silent stalemate. It’s been a long time since Diana’s sword has wavered, and it does for only a moment, a moment so small that no one but another Amazon would be able to tell. Forcing herself to keep breathing, she speaks. “What is their purpose?”

“They wish to speak with you and the man.”

Steve’s physical proximity suddenly becomes acutely obvious to Diana, and she continues to stand in front of him as if she’s guarding him. “What do they want with Steve?" 

“I have only been sent to summon you.”

“And who are you to them? Hades and Persephone?”

“I am one soul.”

“Well, that answers everything,” Steve mutters behind her.

“My king and my queen have the answers you seek.”

Diana wishes she could detect a lie in the figure’s voice, but she can’t. She’s never encountered a soul before, but she’s read everything possible on the Underworld and what kind of horrors lie below. As much as she’d like to deny the authenticity of the ghost in front of her, she can’t.

“I will go with you,” she says slowly. “But Steve will not.”

“What?” Steve barks. She can’t see his face, but she gets a striking mental picture of the incredulous expression he’s got to be wearing about now.

“They wish to speak to you and the man,” the figure repeats.

“He does not go,” Diana insists, the anger rising in her voice and her body. “I will go, but he will not.”

“Diana,” Steve says. All he needs to do is say her name, and she goes still. “I need to go, too.”

“Steve, if you go…this is the Underworld. Where the dead are.”

“I’m aware of the Underworld, yes.”

“If you slipped through the Fates’ fingers, and your presence alerts them—“

“No harm will come to either of you. This, my king and my queen vow,” the figure interjects. “You and the man are guaranteed safe passage.”

“That settles it.” Steve moves forward now so he’s in Diana’s peripheral. “Diana. I have to go. I have to.”

In the half-second it takes her to blink, his face when he’d left her after killing Ludendorff scorches itself into the backs of her eyes. He’d said the same words then, too, and only moments later, she had watched as his plane exploded in the sky. A bitter taste fills the back of her mouth, but when she looks at Steve, she sees the pure sincerity in his eyes. She sees he’s right. He has to go.

She lowers her sword but remains on guard as she looks at the ghost with hard eyes. “First, we suit up.”

* * *

The sight of Diana in her armor will never grow old, Steve decides. Between the two of them, she has far more to put on, but she’s done in record time, absolutely putting Steve to shame. As he dresses, the discomfort of being in clothes that aren’t his—he acknowledges that technically they’re his, but they’re still not _his_ —in addition to the impracticality of his casual apparel as opposed to Diana’s armor settles heavily on him. Not much feels as thought it belongs to him, though truthfully, it’s been a long time since he’s felt ownership of any kind.

“Steve.” Diana pops her head into the bedroom where he’s finishing his change from the regular t-shirt he’d been sleeping in to the closest thing he has to tactical gear: the loosest pair of slacks Diana allowed that still looked modern, boots, a black t-shirt, and a jacket thrown on top. He feels ridiculous. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Almost.” He longs to stare at her in all her Amazon glory, but he knows now isn’t the time nor the place to oogle her. “Is the spook still out there?”

Diana almost gently chastises him but doesn’t. “Yes. The soul is waiting to take us to Hades and Persephone.”

“How does a ghost wait, anyway?” Steve asks as he buckles his belt, glancing up at her before slipping the remaining bits of leather through the loops. “Is he just looking around at the art? Having a cup of coffee?”

“First of all, there’s no way to tell if the soul is a man. Second of all, I don’t think time is of much importance to the dead.”

“Do I count? As dead?” Steve shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket just to test how deep they are and what he can carry with him. Frowning, he turns and looks around like he’s searching for something. “What am I even going to use as a weapon?”

“No, you count as alive. And you don’t get a weapon.”

Steve’s face becomes comically indignant, and he stares at her with a screwed up face. “What? What do you mean I don’t get a weapon? You get your sword.”

“Because my sword is designed to kill creatures from my world. Anything you bring along wouldn’t do anything.”

Steve makes a disgusted face and sighs, putting his hands on his hips. “So that’s that then? I don’t get any kind of thing to use to defend myself?”

“Here.” Diana removes her shield from her back and hands it to him. “Better?” 

His smile is unmatched by anything else in the world as he takes it from her hands. “God, yeah.”

“Now are you ready?”

He nods in response and crosses toward her, again trying not to stare at how powerful and, well, _regal_ she looks in her complete armor. “So what should I expect?”

“I don’t know,” Diana replies. Her eyebrows knit together in a worried frown. “I’ve never been to the Underworld before.”

“Guess I should’ve seen that coming. You hadn’t ever left Themyscira when I dropped in, and I guess you haven’t had much contact with any other Paradise Island-like places since I’ve been away.” Steve looks at her out of the corner of his eye as they walk together down the hall. “Looks like this is something new for the both of us.”

“It would appear to be,” Diana replies, her frown still weighing down the corners of her mouth. They enter the living room where the soul waits for them. As soon as they walk in, the soul’s hollow eye sockets in its translucent head turn toward them. “We are ready.”

“Diana, Princess of Themyscira. Steve Trevor, mortal of Earth. We are now to pass from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead.”

“Just so we’re clear.” Steve steps forward, which gets him an angry, almost panicked cut of Diana’s eyes. “What exactly does that entail? What are we to expect as we…I can’t believe I’m saying this…switch realms?”

If he’d expected the soul to answer his question, he’s severely disappointed. The soul moves forward as if Steve hasn’t spoken at all, and the tendrils that represent its arms extend out to the side. Its arms reach far beyond the capabilities of a human, and at first, Diana can’t figure out what’s happening. Then she notices the sparks of electricity as they snap through the air.

“Energy,” she murmurs. “The soul is absorbing energy.”

The weight of her realization crashes into Steve, and he looks at her with wide eyes. “To transport?”

Without warning, a deafening boom thunders throughout the apartment’s living room, and a large swirling circle of black water appears beneath the soul’s arms. Violent winds whip through Diana’s hair, and she lifts an arm to shield her face, squinting against the burning sting it leaves in her eyes. When she looks over at Steve, she sees familiarity and something else she can’t quite place behind his gaze. He lifts his eyes to meet hers and points to the water, shouting something over the roaring din of the winds.

“What?” she shouts to him.

“What I saw!” he shouts back.

Diana starts to answer, but a strong pull in her stomach launches her toward the pool. She raises her arms to cover her face, turning to see where Steve is and what’s happening to him. The gravitational pull captures him as well, and they’re both catapulting forward into the inky whirlpool the soul has created. The coldness of the water grips Diana the way the soul’s hand had gripped her throat—one time when she’d lived in Boston during the 1990s, her co-workers had coaxed her into seeing _Titanic_ in theaters. Diana hasn’t thought about that movie in years, but she hears young Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice talking about cold water feeling like knives. For an Amazon who’s never truly felt the sensation of being anything but pleasantly warm, Diana understands cold for the first time.

When the water closes over her head, she thrashes. Her body twists and turns, reaching for whatever she can, reaching for Steve. Sometimes she swears she can make him out, but other times, she’s certain she’s lost him forever. Gravity continues to pull her down, and she wonders if she’s made a mistake. She should have known better than to trust an emissary of the Underworld, especially when it had tried to kill her. She should have _known_.

Just as consciousness flirts with the idea of vanishing, she breaks through the surface. A heavy gasp bursts forth from her mouth, a cannonball of sound amidst the silent stillness around her. Her head swims, and she closes her eyes to steady herself. Off to her right, she hears the rippling splash of someone else breaking the surface, too.

“Diana!” Steve calls out, his head thrashing as he coughs. “Diana!”

“Steve!” she calls back to him and starts to swim. The second he hears her voice, he makes a line straight toward her. “Steve, are you all right?”

“Come here,” he says. He ignores the question, though whether he ignores it because he doesn’t have the breath to answer yet or because he’s just ignoring it, she doesn’t know. The water around them is still, and there’s hardly a sound aside from their arms as they swim toward each other.

Diana reaches him before he reaches her. She takes hold of his wrist and then his arm, moving her expert hands up to his elbow and then his shoulders as she examines him. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“No,” he pants. “Are you?”

“I’m not hurt.” She treads water, noticing how unnaturally still it is for a body of water—what is this? A river? Rivers are supposed to flow, but the water doesn’t move at all. Diana had expected to surface amongst churning waves due to the chaotic forcefulness of the water when she’d been submerged in it, but the reality of its absolute stillness shocks her.

“Where are we?” Steve cranes his neck as he looks around.

Diana looks, too. They’re in a river of black water so opaque she can’t even see her hand directly beneath the water’s surface. Chills rattle their way down her spine, but that sense of dread is nothing compared to the feeling that consumes her when she hears the sound of rowing. Turning her head in the direction of the sound, she catches the sight of a man standing on a raft. The man paddles toward them, and her mouth goes dry.

“The Underworld,” she says quietly, already moving in front of him and placing him protectively behind her.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” he murmurs. “Is this our rescue boat? Where’d the ghost go?”

“Steve, we’re in the River Styx.” She swallows hard and reaches for her sword beneath the water as she watches the raft draw nearer. “Do you know what that is?”

“River of the dead to the Underworld, right?”

“Good.” Her fingers wrap around the hilt of the sword. “That man on the raft? His name is Charon. He’s here to take us where we need to go.”

Steve pauses, observing the man at a distance. “I don’t think I like the looks of him.”

“There’s a reason for that.” Diana’s back meets the gentle rise of Steve’s chest as he inhales to ask something else, but she shakes her head as a signal to be quiet. “Let me do the talking.”

The sound of his teeth gritting together catches her ear, but he does what she tells him. Even though Diana’s heard stories of Charon and the River Styx, reading about it in books or listening to the Amazons tell stories is nothing compared to the experience of actually seeing it. As a child, she’d been fascinated by the stories of the gods and goddesses her Amazon sisters had known. She’d wanted to know everything about these mysterious gods who had the power to create life, and yes, she’d wanted to know about Hades and the Underworld, too.

Despite how modern mortals view Hades, Diana was never taught to view him as a villain. Her mother had warned her that he wasn’t someone to trust, but he wasn’t the kind of evil the way the world of mankind made him out to be. At the time, Diana had been far more interested in the stories her mother had about mankind, but now, she wishes she’d listened more to what Hippolyta had told her about Hades and Persephone both.

One slow paddle stroke after another, Charon glides up to them. Diana can’t exactly pull herself up to her full height when she’s mostly underwater, but she tries as best as she can to show that she isn’t intimidated. She looks up, and Charon looks down, and their eyes meet.

An impression is made.

Charon is tired. He doesn’t look like he’s had an hour’s sleep in centuries, and even without asking, Diana is certain he would only confirm her guess. But tired as he may be, he has a sturdy face with determined golden eyes that gaze down at her from up above the handle of his paddle. He squints his eyes slightly and tilts his head, surveying her. “Hippolyta’s daughter. Diana.”

“You know me,” she says. A statement. Not a question.

Charon nods, and then he lifts his paddle to hold out to her. “Come aboard, Princess. You and your mortal man are to be given safe passage throughout this realm.”

Diana catches the tightening of Steve’s muscles behind her, and she longs to turn around and say something to comfort him. However, she reaches forward and takes hold of the paddle. Without showing a sign of any kind of strain, Charon lifts her up onto the raft before lowering the paddle down to Steve and repeating the rescue mission for him, too. Diana watches, pushing herself into a standing position as her hand instantly goes to her sword again.

“He is safe, Princess. Lord Hades and Lady Persephone would not make the mistake of promising his safety only to betray their word.” Charon’s strange golden eyes land on her, his expression curious. Diana senses it’s been a long time since he’s felt curiosity about anything. “Princess of Themyscira.”

“Charon of the River Styx,” she counters back. “I know who you are. When I was a child, my mother told me all kinds of stories about the Underworld.”

“A legend I was. I see,” Charon muses with a small, bland smirk. “Did you know I’m not the only legend around these parts, Princess?”

“Our history is full of legends. Persephone herself is one of the most famous legends associated with our past in the Underworld.”

Charon’s lips slide back even further into a true smile. “You don’t understand, daughter of Hippolyta. Amazon. Demigoddess. Hero. Wonder Woman.”

Steve’s fist clenches, and Charon’s eyes cut toward him. “And you.”

“Don’t touch him,” Diana warns, drawing herself up taller as her hand tightens on her sword.

Charon ignores her. “Would you say you are confident with your Greek mythology?”

Steve blinks, clearly not having expected that question. “I…I’m rusty on it, I suppose.”

A low chuckle rumbles deep in Charon’s throat, and he shakes his head with an expression that clearly says he finds Steve amusing. “The mortal who captured the demigoddess’s heart. I see. And you think _we_ are the stuff of legends.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asks. His eyes dart over to Diana and then back to the tired man staring intently at him.

“It means we know you, Steve Trevor. But this isn’t my story to tell. No.” Finally, Charon turns from Steve and walks back to the front of the raft. His paddle dips down into the water, and then the raft slips forward like silver against silk. “I conduct the River and its passengers. What I see and hear while I make my journey between the realms _is_ my story to tell, however, and I remember you.”

Diana’s chest constricts, and she looks over at Steve to see if he’s interpreting Charon’s statement the same way she is. His dark eyebrows are pushed together in a deep frown, and he licks his lips thoughtfully, processing what this stranger has just said.

“I don’t speak Ancient Greek riddles, so…I have no idea what the hell you’re trying to tell me,” he says finally.

Charon lets out another soft chuckle. “You know nothing of hell, Steve Trevor. But I do. I deliver people to its jaws everyday. Don’t worry, though. Hell isn’t in your chapter for today, which comes as a comfort, I imagine.”

“What you said before. What did you mean?” Steve presses. “About remembering me. Have we met?”

“We have. It wouldn’t be customary for you to remember our meeting, but I remember everything.”

Diana swallows hard. “You died, Steve. You really did die.”

“Only for a second,” Charon says over his shoulder in her direction, his voice a lazy toss of nonchalance. “You were here and then gone, but I remember you nonetheless. The thing with mortals is that you remember nothing. I, on the other hand, cannot forget a single thing. Do you have any idea what that’s like? All the dead I’ve carried? Their faces and their voices? Their shrieks? Their agony? Memory.” He snorts a tiny bit and shakes his head. “Humans should fear memory more than they fear death.”

Behind Charon’s head, Diana looks over at Steve and moves closer. She doesn’t know if she makes the first move to slip her hand into Steve’s or if he takes the initiative before she can, but their fingers discreetly lace together for a heartbeat, and then they release like it never even happened. Her heart aches to ask him how he’s doing and if the shield makes him feel safer, but she doesn’t get the chance to. In the distance, shouts and cries consume the stale atmosphere above them and around them.

“The souls,” Charon explains. “We hear them all the time.”

“Where are they?” Diana asks. “I don’t see them.”

“Below.” Charon’s paddle cuts through the glass-like water. “You can’t see them grabbing as we pass, but I can.”

Again, chills travel the length of Diana’s spine, and she feels Steve press against her side a little bit more. They make their way down the River, nearing their destination with each stroke Charon makes to propel the raft forward. Every now and then, they pass a cup or a book, a memento of a life. The objects never move forward or away from the raft, but the raft always passes them and leaves them behind. Diana does not envy Charon or his job.

A few minutes pass, and Diana notices they’re nearing the shore. “Are we here?”

“Your escorts are here, Princess.”

Charon’s response isn’t quite the answer she’s looking for, but Diana accepts it. Carefully, she places herself between Steve and the shore as they near it. “Where are they? The escorts?”

“Oh, they’re there, Princess,” Charon replies. “You just can’t see them.”

“I can’t, either,” Steve adds, frowning.

“You can only see them if you’re from the realm of the dead.” Charon’s lips twist upward into an ambiguous smile, his eyes trailing the Amazon princess and her mortal companion while they step off the raft and onto the grassy bank. “You’ll know if you’re going the wrong way. They would never let you stray.”

Diana draws her sword then, holding it in a way that isn’t threatening but also isn’t idle. Lifting her eyes, she meets Charon’s, and she nods her respect. “Thank you for bringing us here safely.”

Her gratitude strikes Charon in an odd place, and he laughs, pushing off from the banks and drifting out toward the center of the River again. “Farewell, Princess. Daughter of Hippolyta. Demigoddess. Wonder Woman. Farewell.”

“Jesus,” Steve mumbles behind her. “I never thought I’d be happier to be on land again than when we sailed from your island to London, but I was wrong.”

Diana’s eyes are troubled, but she suppresses the frown that threatens to take over her face. “I believe his job is more difficult than we realize.”

“Diana.” He reaches for her hand again. “We’ve got to go. I have a feeling our invisible escorts won’t take kindly to us making them wait an eternity.”

“What’s time to something that’s dead?” she asks flatly. She catches the disturbed look that passes over his face at her blunt response, and she squeezes his hand, softening her face as she looks him in the eye. “Come on. We’ve been summoned. We walk, and if we go astray, we’ll know.”

Little does Diana know just how true her statement will become.


	13. Clarity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, lescall, and Felix786 for commenting! Some of left the most beautiful comments I've ever gotten since I've started writing fic, and it seriously means so much to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
> 
> So Gal Gadot just did an interview on the Justice League tour where she said that the original decision of Diana's choosing to abandon mankind for 100 years wasn't a good choice, and so they're fixing that. On one hand, I'm THRILLED because I hated how the WW solo fit with WW in BvS since it just didn't seem like Diana to abandon mankind after Steve's death, especially since his death was a huge part of her realizing that humans have the ability to be good, and it's all a choice. HOWEVER. On the other hand, I've been stressed about what that means for this fic because I like to keep it as close to canon compliant as possible, and I've written this based off of the idea that Diana turned away from mankind. I've been torn between the idea of going back to to the chapter that part's discussed in to rewrite that section, and just cutting it as a loss and continuing to keep it the way it is now. Until I reach an official decision, I decided to neutrally kind of address it here? A while back in a personal conversation, thesinfulship theorized that maybe Diana did help, but she just didn't put on the armor, and I was so frustrated I hadn't thought to include that in my fic here but alas. Anyway, all credit goes to her for that theory. If you have any thoughts on if I should rewrite or just cut my losses, please, PLEASE let me know. That's one of the reasons why I'm so late in getting a new chapter up because I've been annoyingly stressed about how to handle this little retcon.
> 
> Thank you again for continuing to read, and thank you especially to those who have been giving me feedback! I really can't express just how much your kind words have meant to me and how much more confidence they've given me about my own writing. I hope y'all continue to enjoy where I'm going with this. Enjoy! :)

The Underworld looks nothing at all like Diana has always pictured it. As a child, she’d listened to the stories her mother had told her—she’d asked what kind of good deeds someone would have to do in order to go to Elysium, and reversely, she’d also asked what kind of act would be so bad it would condemn a person to Tartarus. Diana walks through the Underworld now, knowing that despite all of the stories and legends she’s grown up with, she has had no _inkling_ of what the afterlife is like in reality.

For the first five minutes of the walk to where Diana assumes they are to meet Hades and Persephone, she hears screams. Or she thinks they’re screams. She hears sounds, but she can’t make out if they’re moans, words, screams, or nothing at all. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Steve asks carefully, looking at her briefly as if to gauge her reaction.

“I don’t know,” she answers and frowns.

“If you’d asked me that back on Earth, I would’ve had no clue what ‘I don’t know’ was supposed to mean, but here…I somehow know exactly what you mean, and I don’t know if that’s supposed to alarm me or comfort me.” Steve pushes strands of dark blond hair out of his eyes with the hand that isn’t carrying Diana’s shield. “It’s like my mind is playing tricks on me.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Diana murmurs. All around her, she hears the pitter patter of footsteps. She assumes the source of these sounds are the escorts neither she nor Steve can see, but at this point, she’s hesitant to decide what is real and what isn’t. Her brain seems to move through water, slowing down her reflexes and thought processes, and yet she remains in full control of everything she does. When she glances at Steve, he doesn’t seem to be experiencing the same effects, or if he is, he’s doing very well at hiding it.

The farther they walk, the more Diana thinks she sees things. Darting shadows out of the corner of her eye, moving behind dark trees that suddenly disappear as quickly as they’d appeared. A woman in a black dress stands in a clear meadow, but the air melts into a translucent glaze that makes it so Diana can’t make out the woman’s face. In the distance, she sees a figure crouched down, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s even human. Every hair on her body stands straight with the chills that run their way down the lattice of her spine.

“Diana?” Steve gently takes her arm. “This way.”

Blinking quickly, she realizes she’s been staring too closely off into the distance, wandering a little away from where Steve is, but she allows him to take her arm and guide her back. She takes a breath and shakes her head, eyes still trailing off into the blurred glass atmosphere that seems to make up the Underworld. “All of these people…I wish to help them.”

“I don’t think you can,” Steve says quietly. He doesn’t mean it in a cruel way, in a way to demean her or minimize her power, but rather a realistic way. And Diana knows he’s right. All of these figures they see and hear are people who are dead and have been condemned to various parts of the Underworld. She doesn’t know where exactly they are in relation to anything, but she knows that everyone who is here is supposed to be here.

An uneasy feeling creeps into Diana’s skin, nestling itself down and making its home there inside her. Charon said that he remembers Steve. As she looks over at Steve again, she looks at him with the realization that he’s been here before. Most likely, he hadn’t gotten as far into the Underworld as he is right now, but this is one of the few places he’s gone where she hasn’t.

“I know,” she answers after a few moments. “I know I can’t tamper with the system of the afterlife, but that doesn’t make me want to help them any less.”

“I understand.”

Diana knows he does.

After more walking, large walls begin to loom in front of them. Diana pauses, wondering if the walls have been here for a longer period of time, but she just hasn’t noticed them. Her eyes tilt up to the sky as if Zeus himself will give her an answer via lightning bolt, but she sees nothing. Just emptiness. Suddenly, Diana’s struck by the realization that she’s never known nothingness to have a color until now. She will never be able to get over all the new things she continues to learn every day of her life, despite being 6,000 years old.

They reach what appears to be a gate, and Diana’s grip on her sword tightens. Whatever lies behind the doors to the gate could be something designed to kill either her or Steve. Yes, she was promised safe passage for the both of them, but with reality seeming to twist and scatter itself through each of her senses, she doesn’t trust anything. As she waits for the gates to open, she doesn’t catch Steve’s small nod to something off to the side.

“This place,” she says slowly. “I recognize it.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks.

“The pictures my mother used to show me. This was Hades’s castle.” She pauses, considering her word choice. “Is. Is Hades’s castle.”

“So that means we’re here then?”

With pursed lips, she nods and hopes she doesn’t look as apprehensive as she feels inside her chest. The sturdy gates carefully swing open without a sound, and a hall lit only with torches that lean outward from the walls waits ahead of them. Diana pauses, waiting for something to happen, but no one comes to greet them—no one comes to harm them. She looks over at Steve and meets his eyes. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

“You know I do,” he murmurs in response.

“I know.” Her fingertips skate over his cheekbone, a small gesture of her affection for him as much as it is a gesture of comfort and self-assurance. “But I have to ask, anyway.”

“And I love you for it.”

Diana’s body aches to take him in her arms, to press him so hard against her that he manages to melt into her. Only then will she be convinced of her ability to keep him safe from anything and anyone who would ever try to hurt him. She wants to do it so bad she can hardly stand it, but she doesn’t do it. She respects him far too much to treat him as if he were a child who has no sense of danger. Out of everyone she knows, Steve Trevor has been the one to wake up with danger in his bed the most.

“If anything happens, take care of yourself.” She stares hard at him and presses her palm into his cheek in lieu of a kiss. “Don’t try to protect me from anything that may happen. Between the two of us, I’m the most prepared to take on any threats. I want you worrying about yourself and only yourself.”

“I definitely know by now that I’m as capable of protecting you from physical harm as a fish is learning to waltz,” Steve says, that wry smirk of his crossing his face. Again, Diana’s heart flutters, and she’s reminded of just how much she’s missed his sense of humor in his absence. When she’d first come to the world of mankind, she hadn’t quite understood his kind of sarcasm and banter, but the more she’d listened to him talk, the more she’d studied his body language and his facial expression, the more she’d come to understand his way of being humorous. She’s missed so many parts of him for so goddamn long that she hasn’t realized until now that his sense of humor is one of the qualities that has become buried beneath piles of other broken down memories of him.

“I doubt we’ll be teaching any fish to waltz today,” she replies as she mirrors his expression. “But we go into this together.”

“Together until something bad happens, at which point I’m supposed to only fend for myself and run for the hills.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” She shoots him a look. “I meant it as in don’t jeopardize yourself to try to help.”

“Of course. You need help at any point, though, you just yell, and I’ll do whatever kind of mortal thing I can do.”

“You’re funny.” She looks down at her sword and inhales. Hades is her uncle. Persephone is her aunt. She’s about to face members of her father’s side of the family, members she’s never met and has only heard a number of tales about. In her head, Hippolyta tells her not to be afraid. Hades is a god, but he’s not evil. One time, Hippolyta had asked Diana how her mood would be if she were to run a realm full of dead mortal souls, and Diana had never again asked why Hades had such a bad reputation amongst the other gods. “Ready?”

Steve nods. “Ready.”

And together, they both begin the walk down the hall.

Reality distorts, and there are several moments when Diana isn’t even sure she’s walking in a straight line. The torches on the wall seem to grow brighter while slowly growing dimmer as if they were controlled by a dining room dimmer switch. She doesn’t know how long it takes them to go from one end of the hall to the other, but suddenly, they’re no longer in the hall. A large open space surrounds them, and that same color of nothingness that stained the sky outside stretches up above them.

“My niece,” a voice rings out. _Are there echoes?_ Diana wonders. She blinks hard and forces her mind to focus on one thought at a time, one command to her muscles at a time.

A man walks out from the shadows—are they shadows? Are they curtains? Did he come through the wall?—and neither Diana nor Steve needs an introduction to know that he is Hades. Diana is silent as she observes him. He doesn’t look like the pictures Hippolyta had shown her, but then again, neither had Ares. In the pictures on Themyscira, Ares had been a huge, expansive figure who seemed to take up more air than space. However, in person, he’d been nothing more than a thin man wrapped inside a skeleton of armor constructed from the very bones of destruction. As for Hades, he takes up space, but he does it so that it’s almost impossible to take notice of him. Like his castle. Like his realm.

“Hades,” she says, her voice steady. She already stands at her fullest height, and she widens her stance to ground herself even more sturdily. “I grew up learning stories about you.”

“As do most children,” he says smoothly. He eyes her with interest, the dark brown of his eyes boring into her as if they can see the very lightning that alights her soul. “But you didn’t grow up watching that silly cartoon movie of me. You grew up with real pictures and real stories.” His gaze slides over to Steve. “But you didn’t grow up watching that cartoon, either. Funny. A mortal and an immortal. So different and yet you have something in common in your childhoods.”

“That’s more of a time difference thing than anything,” Steve replies as he refuses to wither beneath the god’s stare.

“Does this place look familiar to you?” Hades asks then. Genuine curiosity fills his voice as his attention turns completely to Steve.

“I…no.” Steve frowns, glances at Diana, and then looks back at Hades. “Should it?”

The corner of Hades’s mouth twitches as if he’s holding back an explosion of laughter. “No. But you did spend a brief amount of time here.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised to hear that,” Steve quips in response.

“You were never supposed to die in that plane, however,” Hades continues, still studying Steve for a reaction. “From the moment you were born, your destiny was never to lead you to your death that night.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Steve asks, his grip tightening on the shield.

“You have a great purpose, Steve Trevor. We’ve all been waiting for you.” Hades takes a step closer. For such a tall figure, he’s not intimidating the way that an Ancient Greek god is typically thought to be, but he’s also not shy in how he carries himself. If anything, Hades looks at ease. Confident but relaxed. Present but not overwhelmingly so. “My wife has made contact with you.”

“The face,” Steve murmurs. Realization dawns in his eyes, their blue hue darkening with a mixture of fear and understanding. “She was the face in the water.”

“The divining pool,” Hades gently corrects.

“What do you want with him?” Diana asks. She doesn’t realize she’s moved in front of Steve again, but she has. Behind her, his heat radiates off of him and into her skin, and Diana can’t decide if she’s imagining that, too, or not.

“My wife has a much better way with words than I do.” Hades gives her a smile that can almost be described as gentle. “Part of it, I think, comes from her natural gifts of creation. Spring is a form of creation. The harvest. Plants blooming, trees growing—all of that is creation. And when you think about it, words are creations, too.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well with finding the words,” Steve remarks. “I want to know what the hell is going on. Why am I alive? What do you mean I wasn’t supposed to die in the plane? What does your wife want with me?”

“With the both of you.” Hades’s eyes flick over to Diana. “My little niece. When I heard my brother had sired a child with the queen of the Amazons, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the power you’d have, and yet, here you are. You ended a war…killed my nephew in the process…and you’ve done so much to help mankind in the years since.”

Steve’s eyes turn to Diana. “You said you didn’t help humanity.”

“She didn’t,” Hades answers for her. “Did you, Diana?”

Diana’s face hardens, but she doesn’t look at Steve. “I didn’t put on the armor.”

“She took away the figure of hope she’d given people during the first war with you.” Hades takes another step closer and smiles at her. “You remember what it was like standing at the top of that church you destroyed. All of those people you’d saved from the Germans stood below you and cheered for you, looked at you as someone they could find hope in. And the armor was part of that, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Diana?”

Nodding only a fraction, she pauses and looks at Steve. “I didn’t help as Wonder Woman. Whenever I could help otherwise…but the armor…I didn’t. I couldn’t…”

“And she killed the hope that so many people needed.” Hades’s smile widens. “And _that_ is why you’re my favorite niece, Diana of Themyscira. You understand that the death of hope is the most meaningful fatality of all.”

“ _Hades_.” A sharp voice rings out. Diana immediately pushes Steve directly behind her, knees bending as she grounds herself. Seemingly out of nowhere, a woman appears. She had to have come from somewhere, Diana tells herself. This woman couldn’t just appear. Yet Ares had been able to do it, and Hades probably can, too. In the world of the dead, she can’t tell what’s real and what she’s imagining, and it isn’t until then that she realizes how much that terrifies her. “Leave Diana alone.”

The woman makes her way toward Diana. Her face flickers in and out of focus, but Diana blinks and blinks and blinks as if she can clear the blurriness away with just a few tenses of muscle. Gently, the woman smiles and reaches for Diana’s face. Initially, Diana’s instinct is to pull away, but there’s something so loving and careful about the woman’s touch that she can’t bring herself to. She closes her eyes, and visions of her mother touching her face in the same way flicker before her. An unexpected sense of homesickness swells up inside her, and she can’t stop the sharp inhale that fills her lungs in a short jolt.

When she opens her eyes, she can see the woman clearly. Everything around her is clear. Suddenly, Diana knows what is real and what is not, and she stares at the woman with confusion, horror, and also surprise. “Persephone.”

The goddess smiles. In this moment, Diana remembers every story she’s ever heard about Persephone. She remembers it was Persephone’s beauty that had first attracted Hades, her kindness that had made him want to stay, and her desire for freedom that had led to her imprisonment. The goddess of creation stands in front of her and smiles beautifully, as radiant as the Sun itself, even though it’s been centuries since she’s seen or felt the Sun. Her vibrant green eyes are warm, her thick blonde hair loose and free, and the irony of how alive she looks when living in a world full of dead people doesn’t escape Diana. Living with the dead can’t be easy, and for a goddess whose powers come through creation, life, and sustenance, Diana can’t even begin to imagine how much of a prison this realm must feel for her. Feeling strangely emotional, Diana blinks quickly and looks into the goddess’s face. “Persephone.”

“You know me.” Persephone’s voice is musical, gentle, and she runs her soft thumb over Diana’s cheekbone. “Beautiful girl. Beautiful woman. You look so much like your mother. Did she tell you we were close once?”

Diana’s lungs threaten to stop working out of sheer shock, but she finds herself breathing despite the intense surprise of Persephone’s question. Hippolyta had never told Diana anything of the sort. Just from what Diana remembers, the Amazons had mainly kept to themselves, and the only gods or goddesses they’d known had been for a short amount of time, too short to really claim it at all. She manages to shake her head. “No.”

“Your mother and I share a love for beauty, and oh, you are just so truly lovely.” Persephone lowers her hands, smiling still, and she glances over at Hades. “My King, I fear you’ve been rude to our niece. Her choice not to wear the armor was hers and hers alone, and it’s not for you to speak of right or wrong. Our Diana has brought a light of hope to the world that never would have been there if she had never left Themyscira.” Persephone’s gaze turns to Steve, and she smiles at him, too. “And speaking of Diana leaving Themyscira. Steve Trevor.”

“Your voice. I know your voice.” Steve stares hard at her as if he can see through her entirely. “The—the divining pool?”

“It was the only way I could reach you and tell you of your purpose. As much as my husband likes to use deception to his advantage, he did tell you the truth about your destiny. You never were supposed to die on the plane, and the Fates arranged it that way. Without the War, you never would have been given that mission. Without that mission, you never would have landed on Themyscira. Without landing on Themyscira, you never would have gotten the island’s healing agent into your cells. All of this happened because it was designed to bring you one step closer to your destiny.”

Steve lifts his hands like he’s going to cover his ears, like he’s going to block the sound of her voice, and he shakes his head violently. “Wait. _Wait._ You’re telling me that not only was the United States government trying to recruit me, but the Greek gods were?”

“Recruit isn’t the word I would use,” Persephone smoothly replies. “Please, Steve Trevor. Please don’t look so distressed. Your purpose is a wondrous one, a purpose that’s fitting for the man who captured the heart of our Wonder Woman.”

“What does Diana have to do with this?” Steve snaps. He knows Diana wants him behind her, but he needs to be on equal footing with her. He steps to the side from around her and stares at Persephone without breaking eye contact. “Whatever business you have with me, I want to know what it is and how Diana’s involved.”

“It’s about time for you to hear the prophecy,” Persephone murmurs. She brings a hand to her face and leans her cheek against her palm as she studies him. “You’ve heard a little bit of it already, but my power wasn’t quite strong enough for me to relay it to you fully. Besides, I so much prefer speaking in person as it’s been some time since I’ve been in the world above.”

“Prophecy,” Diana repeats. The word comes out slowly on her tongue, the syllables tasting like molasses sliding down an icy pole. “Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end.”

Persephone’s smile glows even brighter, a Sun shining its most luminescent on a warm Spring day without a cloud in the sky. Nothing mars the beautiful goddess’s face, but no one can see the condition of her soul. “You heard it, too. Good. Our liaison is doing well.” Before either Steve or Diana can ask her what she means by liaison, she starts to speak, reciting the prophecy in its entirety.

 

_“Pure of heart, hero’s fate must end,_

_One hundred years to make amends._

_A blood price paid, Her pain awakes_

_The goddess who no longer needs to wait._

 

_“The River Styx with all its bones_

_Will send its travellers wand’ring home_

_Rise again, the Fates command_

_For only She can save the land._

_“Fear not death, the dead will walk the Earth_

_Sacrifices turned into birth_

_A tool of purpose to the goddess defy_

_Someone must win, someone must die.”_

Diana runs through the words in her head.

_Someone must die._

_Someone must die._

Instantly, her head snaps to the side, and her eyes land on Steve in a panicked rush.

_Someone must die._

“No!” she screams, lunging toward him, but then the world of the dead cuts to black.


	14. Intimacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to oliviaofthemyscira, thesinfulship, Rex501st, morethanpixels, nymphrea, and Masterclass1057 for commenting!
> 
> Thank you so much for all the feedback on the last chapter, especially regarding the creative choices about Diana's involvement with humanity post-WWI! So sorry for the slight delay in getting this chapter up, but I hope it's worth the wait!
> 
> As always, I really love hearing what you guys think. Thank you again to everyone who's been shooting some feedback my way as it truly does make my day to hear y'all's thoughts. But anyway, just as a warning, there's a sex scene at the end of this chapter, so you've been warned! Enjoy! :)

Diana feels like she’s been punched directly in her diaphragm. Instinctively, she reacts and moves forward to catch her breath and get to Steve. If she can get to Steve, she can keep him safe. Her palms meet wood, and one brush of her knuckles against a soft and strangely familiar rug tells her she’s no longer in the Underworld. Blinking quickly, she lifts her eyes and takes in her surroundings. The shapes in the darkness around her take form, and she feels like she’s been punched in the gut all over again as the sight of her dark bedroom in her Gotham apartment fills the space she can see.

“Steve,” she gasps, pushing herself to her knees.

“What—what the fuck?” Steve chokes out from somewhere in the dark. Diana’s too disoriented to pinpoint where exactly his voice is, but she makes herself move in any direction she can. “Where—“

Her fingers collide with warmth, and she jumps, but then Steve’s hand is on hers, then her shoulder, and then her cheek. “Steve. The light turn—“

She doesn’t know which one of them gets to the lamp first, but Steve is the one to turn it on. Light explodes throughout the room, and Diana physically recoils from its brightness. Still clinging to Steve, she blinks and squints through the hand she’s using to shield herself from the harsh burn of the lamp above her.

“What the fuck was that?” Steve asks, sounding steadier. He looks down at Diana and then slumps to the floor beside her with an exhausted lean of his shoulders. “Was that a bad dream?”

“No.” Diana’s eyes catch the leather of her armor, her sword off to the side. “We were just in the Underworld. Persephone…she’d just recited the prophecy. She said someone must die, and I thought…I thought you…”

She can’t finish the thought, but Steve knows what she’s trying to say. He looks at her, feeling an ache in his neck as he turns his head in her direction, and he tightens his grip on her hand a little. “I know. I’m ok. I’m still here.”

“I didn’t…I thought…” Closing her eyes, she shakes her head as if the physical motion can shake the fear out of her mind.

“How did we get back here?” Steve’s knuckles lightly caress her cheek, a silent affectionate way of saying he’s still there with her. She opens her eyes and looks at him. Just from first glance, she can’t see any sign of him being physically hurt. He looks shaken, a little pale, and concerned, but he isn’t bleeding, nor does he have any bruises. Part of her is amazed that they went to the Underworld and came back without any harm done to them, but part of her is terrified of what that could mean about the future. They had escaped harm this time, but what if there were to be a next time? And just based off what Persephone had said, there _would_ be a next time.

“Magic,” Diana replies. She hates hearing the shakiness of her own voice. “I don’t know what kind or how, but it was magic.”

“Of course,” Steve mutters under his breath. He goes to say something else but can tell from the way Diana’s eyes are still wide, her pupils dilated with adrenaline and fear, she isn’t ready to talk or answer any more questions just yet. “Come here.”

Without speaking, Diana moves closer and folds into him, letting him wrap his arms around her so she leans into him. After having lived through more than any other person in the world except for _maybe_ Bruce, whose lack of years certainly doesn’t negate the extensive range of his experiences, Diana rarely finds herself shaken. She’s lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the horrors of Vietnam. She’s lived through the fall of the Twin Towers in New York City, the rise of mass shootings, administrations of presidents who seemed straight out of a nightmare. It takes a lot to shake Diana Prince, but tonight, she is shaken.

She leans her head against his shoulder and steadies her breathing. Even through his shirt, she can hear his heartbeat, and she tries to sync her breathing to the gentle thrumming of his heart. Almost instantly, she feels the tiniest bit better, and she wonders in the world he can have such a strong effect on her. He rubs her shoulder as she leans into him, and if it weren’t for the shaky breath he takes at one point, Diana would’ve been convinced that he’s holding it together better than she is.

“I was so afraid,” she says softly. “I have you back. I can’t possibly lose you again. If something were to happen…and when Persephone’s prophecy ended with the line about someone needing to die…I haven’t felt fear like that in a long time.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her hair.

Diana pulls back just enough so she can look up at him, and she frowns in confusion. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I’m sorry I was gone for so long,” he amends. “I keep forgetting that I haven’t been away from you for just a couple of days or weeks. For you, it’s been a century. _A century_. Jesus, I remember when I was a kid, and I thought that 100 years had to be the longest amount of time on Earth ever. If only the kid version of Steve Trevor could see me now.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” She reaches up to touch his cheek, her fingertips moving like ghosts over his strong jawline. “There wasn’t anything you could do.”

Steve shrugs a little. “Still.”

Diana’s instinct is to argue with him, to make him see that there really wasn’t anything he could have done to come back sooner. If his awakening has anything to do with the prophecy Persephone had just relayed to them, nothing could have changed even a fraction of his situation. As far as Diana knows from her days as a girl on Themyscira when she’d had to learn her people’s history, prophecies are prophecies for a reason. Like promises, they cannot be broken. However, she doesn’t try to win this civil battle. She’s far too drained, physically and emotionally, and the only thing on her mind is making sure that Steve is really with her.

“What about some tea?” Steve asks softly when he sees her face. She’s still shaken, and he can’t blame her at all. “Let me make some tea, ok?”

She starts to say no—she doesn’t want him out of her sight—but she sees how desperately he wants to help, and so she nods. “Yes. Tea would be nice.”

“I’ll be back in a second, ok?” He leans forward and kisses her forehead, pausing just a moment. “I love you.”

Diana musters up a smile for him when he pulls back, and she reluctantly lets go of his hand so he can stand up. Part of her longs to hover, following him out to the kitchen and staying with him while he makes the tea just so she can verify his continued existence, but part of her never wants to get off her bedroom floor to enter the real world again. She takes a couple more moments to collect herself, and once she’s confident she can stand again, she gets up to change out of her armor.

At first, her hands shake as she unbuckles the straps, and she considers just leaving the armor on until she’s calmed down some more, but she’s a warrior, and if she can’t get her own armor off, then what good is she? In the back of her mind, she can hear Hippolyta telling her to hold herself together, to be an Amazon. Sometimes Diana’s surprised that she can still hear her mother’s voice. After having been in the world for so long, she wouldn’t have expected to remember the exact cadence and rhythmic flow her mother’s voice had carried. But Diana is still an Amazon, and 100 years in the world compared to the thousands she’s spent on Themyscira are nothing but the tiniest scratches across the surface.

 _I am an Amazon_ , Diana tells herself, and her hands steady themselves.

 _I am an Amazon_.

 _I am an Amazon_.

By the time she has on comfortable clothes, Steve is sitting on the bed with two mugs of tea. He instantly brightens when she comes back into the bedroom, and he holds out a mug toward her. “Hey. Tea’s still hot.”

She smiles gently and crosses toward him, taking the mug and sitting on the bed beside him. “Thank you.”

“Are you ok?”

She nods and looks down at their legs where they’re sitting side by side. Steve turns his hand over, palm up for her to take it, and she quietly slips her hand into his. For someone who’s had plenty of sexual experience in her life, holding hands with Steve feels like the most intimate thing she’s ever done with another person, let alone a man. Holding hands wasn’t something Amazons did on Themyscira to show love and affection, and so Diana’s first exposure to it had been with Steve in London, 1918. She smiles and laughs a little at the memory.

“What?” Steve asks, his voice a low, warm rumble.

“Remember when we were in London? And I asked you why a couple was holding hands?”

“Vividly,” Steve replies, which is the truth since in his mind, it hadn’t happened that long ago.

“And then I grabbed your hand, and you told me we weren’t together in that way?”

This time Steve laughs a little and shakes his head in quiet disbelief. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.”

“I was just remembering that.” She looks back down at their hands and then leans her forehead against his shoulder. “Touch is an important form of communication.”

“I…I agree, yes.”

She lifts her head up and looks up at him. “You don’t?”

“No, I do!” he says quickly. “I do. I promise. I was just…thinking of a different kind of…of touching.”

Diana laughs and puts her head back down. “Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Now _that_ is a typical example of the way your sex behaves.”

“I can’t deny it, nor am I proud of it, but that is a shameful part of my male mind,” he says, enjoying the way she laughs. “But anyway, I know what you were saying. That a lot can be conveyed in the way people touch each other.”

Diana releases his hand and runs her fingertips over the back of his hand, turning it over as if she’s a palm reader trying to translate the story of his future from the lines on his hand to the words in her mouth. “The way you touch me is different from the way anyone else ever has.”

“Oh? How?”

She traces a little circle in the center of his palm. “There’s something…more tender about it. I can’t think of the word. But you touch me the way I touched my armor for the first time. Respect, pride, love…all of those things.”

“And it’s because I feel all of that for you—all of that and more.”

Diana takes a swallow of her tea and then sets the mug down on her nightstand before turning back to him. She takes his hand again and holds it with his palm facing her. “I’ve had many lovers since I’ve been alive, each one of them unique. It’s hard to live the thousands of years I have without having a variety of experiences, and I’m grateful for every single one I’ve had. I’ve been with people who were gentle, passionate, timid, confident, and everything in between, but I’ve never been with anyone who’s touched me the same as you do.”

“You should be touched like this all the time,” Steve says softly, almost a whisper. He sets his mug down beside hers and takes both of her hands in his. “When you touch me, it’s new to me, too, you know.”

“Do I?”

He nods, his eyes lifting up to meet hers. “You touch me like you’re afraid to lose me.”

Diana goes still. Still holding his gaze, she blinks quickly and goes to pull her hands away.

“Diana.” Steve reaches out and puts a hand on her cheek. “No. I didn’t mean anything bad by it. If anything, I mean it in a good way.”

“No…no, that’s not what I…” Diana shakes her head, allowing him to touch her, even as it takes all of her strength not to lean into his touch like a starved animal. “I didn’t think you meant anything bad.”

“Then what is it?” he implores, searching her face. “What’s wrong, angel?”

“It’s true,” she says quietly. “I _am_ afraid to lose you. And after what we just heard in the Underworld, I can’t stop thinking about it. If the prophecy says someone must die, then someone _must_ die. What if it’s you? What if you have to be the one to die? I can’t…Steve, I can’t…”

She can’t speak anymore, and Steve understands. He puts both hands on her face, cradling her with his hands as if he can protect her from all the pain in the world with this one small act of love. “I’m not as easy to kill anymore, remember? I’ll be ok. You know that, right?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t know that. Neither of us can. When it comes to the gods, anything is possible, Steve. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember seeing Ares and all he could do? Hades is the god of _death_. Persephone is his wife—if she intends for you to die, then you will die.”

“Hey, hey, hey, no.” Steve’s eyes are intense, their blue color an intoxicatingly deep hue. “Well…maybe. Maybe. But we can’t think like that right now. I promise you I’m going to do my best to not be killed. Whatever Persephone has in store, it doesn’t matter, ok? Right? Because Ares wanted to wipe out mankind and start over again in a world full of people like him and like you, but you stopped that. _You_ stopped a god. He didn’t get what he wanted, and if I know you the way I think I do, then Persephone won’t get what she wants, either. Right? Right, Diana?”

Diana’s breathing steadies a bit more, and she blinks quickly to get the hot wet stinging out of her eyes. “I didn’t do that. It was all of us—you, me, Sammy, and Chief. We _all_ stopped Ares that night.”

“And you’re not alone this time, either.” Steve’s mouth widens into a smile, and he laughs softly, an incredulous expression crossing his face. “You’re not alone, Diana, I swear. I intend to help you in whatever way I can, and I have no doubt that Bruce and the rest of the League would help, too.”

“I don’t want to involve the League.”

“I know you don’t. I know. But what I’m trying to say is that you have choices. You don’t need to be alone if you choose not to be.”

“I know,” she says, her voice quiet. “I know I can call on them if I need to, but I’d like to avoid doing so.”

“Then what about me?” He runs the back of his knuckles against her cheek back toward her ear where he tucks a piece of hair back. “Will you let me be here with you?”

“Will you listen to me when I tell you to stay back?”

“I’m not the best at following orders, but I promise I’ll do my best to try.”

His sincerity is so deep that Diana has to smile. She knows that he’ll do his best to listen to her calls, that he’ll exercise all of his self-control to not argue with her, and she loves him all the more for it. If he weren’t the kind who likes to break rules, Diana wouldn’t have looked twice at him, but back then when they’d first met, it had been his desire to go above and beyond that had attracted her. Well, his willingness to disobey in the name of what’s right had been _one_ of the many parts of him that had appealed to her. If he’d followed the rules, he never would’ve taken Dr. Maru’s notebook, and he never would’ve ended up in Themyscira, and he never would’ve gone off to the front to destroy Ludendorff’s factories. Additionally, he never would’ve died in the plane and been left in a coma for 100 years.

If he had followed the rules as he’d been expected to, there’s a chance he might have survived the War and gone back home. Whether he would have stayed in the military or wanted a quiet life on the farm he’d tried so hard to get away from, Diana can’t predict. She has her suspicions, but she can’t confirm them. He even might have gotten the chance to marry someone and have children, to settle down and have breakfast and read newspapers the way he’d told her people did.

“Ok,” she whispers, pushing those thoughts out of her head. They’re nothing but what ifs, and Diana of all people understands the danger of what ifs. “You may be here with me.”

Steve leans in, his intent clear, and she leans in with him. Their kiss is gentle and almost hesitant, but it conveys everything they both want to say. Finally, Diana lifts her hands to touch him as she remembers what Steve told her only moments ago.

_You touch me like you’re afraid to lose me._

She pauses and pulls back, looking at him with a different kind of determination than she’d had earlier when facing Ares and Persephone. “I will not lose you, Steve Trevor.”

Steve starts to reply, starts to open his mouth to say something in response, but all he can do is reach forward and kiss her again. Diana’s arms slide around his neck in a warm embrace, pulling him closer as she closes her eyes. Even though her eyes are closed, she senses exactly where he is and what parts of him are close to her. She’s pressed against his torso, suddenly noticing that he’s still wearing the shirt he’d worn down to the Underworld, and one of her hands skims down to touch his shoulder.

She doesn’t open her eyes—even when Steve places on of his hands on the swell of her hip and starts to lean over her as he gently guides her backward, she keeps them closed. She runs her hands down his sides, feeling his muscles beneath his shirt, and she sharply inhales when he suddenly changes courses and kisse the side of her neck.

“May I?” he asks. Diana opens her eyes to look up at him, and she sees the starry expression in his glazed eyes, the rich pink of his lips from kissing her.

“Yes,” she murmurs. She wastes no time in pulling him down to her, urging him with the pressure of her hands against the small of his back to get him on top of her. Closing her eyes again, she tilts her head back to let Steve keep kissing her. Despite the fact that she and Steve haven’t had _that_ much sex, she feels tuned in to him enough to get that he wants to take his time with her. The way he holds himself over her and gives her permission to take his shirt off tells her that he wants to be the one over her this time. And so she lets him.

She doesn’t register Steve removing her clothes nor does she remember when he removes his, but when his hand slips between them to position himself between her legs, she arches her back to let him know that she needs him, that she wants him. Easily, Steve pushes his hips forward, and he’s inside her. She smiles as she hears his tight inhale and the quiet, tense sound he makes in the back of his throat. She’s not certain of many things these days, but she’s certain she’ll never tire of the way he sounds in bed with her. She could have listened to his moans and his breaths for a century, and she still wouldn’t be able to get enough of them.

Once he’s fully inside her, he doesn’t move for a couple moments. She knows he needs the time to adjust the way she does, and she loves him even harder for not being ashamed of it. She kisses him, and then he starts to move.

The sex is slow. Steve moves gently, though not without passion. Diana wraps her arms and legs around him and let him stroke deep inside her. There’s something different about having sex like this, and she can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but she notices the way he touches her and kisses her is different. Even his hips moving forward into her with each thrust feel different, and she wants to feel him and know him more. After only having had sex a handful of times in the short amount they’ve known each other, Diana swears the man knows 100 different ways to make her melt and gasp beneath his touch. In the back of her mind, she can just imagine Clio’s reaction.

Steve’s lips drift down toward her collarbone as his hips continue to push against her. Diana tilts her hips, changing the angle at which he’s entering her, and she lets out a quiet moan, the vibrations of it running down her throat and toward his lips. Her moan tastes like velvet, and Steve has to get her to make that sound again. He pushes into her with a sharper thrust, and when she moans again, he realizes he’s received no greater award than that sound right there.

With quiet hands full of everything Diana carries in her heart, she touches his bare skin. Yes, she’s afraid to lose him. Even now with him so close to her he’s inside her, she can’t fight the fear that wells up within her chest. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to get over this fear, nor is she certain that she wants to, but she’s promised him she won’t lose him, and so she must do as she promised. Kissing him harder, she grips at his back to pull him closer still. Steve, encouraged by the language of her touch, moves a little deeper, a little more driven, and Diana feels her body start to build up to its orgasm.

“Steve,” she whispers into his mouth. “Steven.”

The taste of his full name rolling off his tongue will never grow old, either, and she relishes the moment, whispering it to him again. Steve’s throat tightens, and he moves his hand to pull one of her hands off his back. For a moment, Diana has no idea what he’s going to do, but then he laces his fingers through hers and slides their joined hands up above her head. She’s reminded of the intimacy of holding hands with him for the second time tonight, and she has to kiss him again.

Steve’s breathing is quiet and just the tiniest bit labored from holding himself back. He doesn’t want to come before she does, but the pressure building at the base of his spine back behind his hips is almost unbearable. Her free hand snakes down to the lower part of his back where he feels the desire to release, and he drives himself into her with each thrust.

It doesn’t take long, but soon Diana arches her back and holds tight to him, pressing her mouth into his shoulder to keep herself from crying out too loudly as she reaches the point where she loses control over her senses and her thoughts. At this point, she’s outside of her body—she’s a shapeless soul who exists outside of her physical being the way Hades’s souls exist with their smoky iciness. She can’t think about Hades now when she has the taste of Steve’s skin on her lips and the whisper of his desire in her ear.

“Angel,” he whispers, more breath than vocalization. “Angel…Diana.”

And then the pressure increases to where he can’t hold back anymore, and he has to let go. As he comes inside her, he’s remarkably quiet, the only sounds spilling out of his mouth nearly silent tight inhales that almost sound more pained than satiated. Diana stays wrapped around him with her long legs and arms. All she wants to do is feel. Feel his heart and his soul and his body as they both come together in every way possible. His hand still grasps hers, and it’s so intimate Diana nearly forgets to breathe.

They stay tangled with each other afterwards. Neither of them speaks, but neither of them wants to. Everything they could have said has already been said between them, and there’s nothing left for them to say. But Diana’s the first one to break the silence when she’s caught her breath. She gently guides his head so she can look at him, and she kisses him just once, feeling her heart break from all the weight of her love. 

“My survivor.”


	15. Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, IllusiveWritings, pennylane93, Rex501st, and Teksasha for commenting!
> 
> Sorry this update also took a bit longer than normal! I kind of wanted to wait until Justice League was out so I could see it and then figure out how much I needed to tweak what I have going on here. That being said, if you're worried about Justice League spoilers being in this chapter, there are 0 spoilers!
> 
> As always, I adore hearing what y'all think. Your comments are so sweet, and they really do make my day. But here we go: enjoy!

At some point, Diana drifts off to sleep. The last thing she remembers is Steve lightly stroking her hair and saying something about breakfast in the morning. Tonight is when of the few nights when she dreams. In her dream world, she’s back in 1918 with Steve, but this time she’s able to save him. This time, she takes the plane and flies it up into the sky before detonating it. She saves the day, she saves the world, and she saves Steve.

When they return to their lives, she becomes his secretary who is sent along on Steve’s missions with him under the guise of being a translator. She wears the armor, and he wears his uniform, and together they save the world more than once. Eventually, they realize he isn’t aging, nor is he getting hurt, leading them both to realize he’s potentially immortal the way she is. She doesn’t quite understand the full significance of marriage—it’s still a foreign concept to her—but she agrees to marry him. Together, they live and work and love. They read the paper and go to work the way Steve had told her people do when there aren’t any wars to fight.

And then everything melts away. This dream world inside her head, this beautiful life she could have had, breaks apart, and she’s left in the worst moment of her life. Suddenly, she’s pinned to the ground with her eyes tilted up to the sky as she follows a plane’s trajectory. She watches it climb higher and higher, and she realizes what’s about to happen. Before she can do anything else, the plane explodes, and Diana screams. And the nightmare repeats, and Diana screams again and again, the raw feeling of loss tearing at her with the same amount of intensity each time she watches the plane explode in a seemingly endless loop.

“Diana.”

Steve’s voice.

“Diana.”

Steve’s hands. The gentle caress of his touch.

“Diana.”

Right as she’s about to watch the plane explode for the hundredth time, she opens her eyes with a sharp inhale and is startled to find Steve sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand gently rubbing her shoulder. Judging by the look on his face, she can tell he senses something’s wrong with her. Steve’s worried expression is common—tightly knit eyebrows, mouth turned down, eyes wide—but on him, it’s a completely different expression all together.

“Hey. I just came to wake you for breakfast,” he murmurs, his voice still rumbly from sleep. “Are you all right?”

Diana weighs her options. She could always lie and say yes. She could pretend she hadn’t just dreamt his death on repeat because she can’t get Persephone’s words out of her head. Or she could tell him the truth and let him in. Vulnerability is something they’ve witnessed in each other far more than is normal for people who’ve only known each other a short amount of time, yet Diana can’t imagine letting anyone but Steve see the very inner depths of her core where all she can feel is emotion churning inside her. But as she looks at his face, she thinks again of how much she longs to protect him. Her desire to keep him safe is so intense it’s almost an ache that originates in the bottom of her heart and spreads out through every nerve in her body. But as she thinks of how she wants him to be honest with her, she understands she can’t live by double standards.

“Bad dreams.” She tries to find a way to elaborate, but she can’t seem to make her throat any less dry. Steve’s thumb brushes over the soft skin of her shoulder, and he reaches forward to push some hair off her neck.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She considers his offer, again weighing her options, but she shakes her head. “No.”

“Alright,” he says, not unkindly, and Diana believes he means it. A strong wave of love and appreciation for him rolls inside her chest, and she pushes herself up into a seated position before reaching out to him. He immediately catches the hint, and he folds her up in his arms, his warmth as comforting as ever. As she buries her nose into the softness of his wild hair—she’s never noticed how, in the mornings, it sticks straight up until looking at him just now—she closes her eyes and leans into him.

“You made breakfast?” she asks softly.

“Yeah. I mean…I’m not much of a cook, but I tried to fix something.”

“What did you make?”

“Well, are you a waffle or a pancake kind of girl?”

She smiles into his hair as she notices how he calls her a girl. She can’t remember the last time she’s actually felt like a girl rather than a centuries old demigoddess princess of the Amazons, but she enjoys the way he makes her feel, though she’s certain he could call her a knitting needle, and she’d like the way it sounds in his voice. “Waffle.”

“Thank God.” He heaves a sigh of relief. “My pancakes aren’t great to begin with, but if you prefer pancakes, I was about to go try my hand at them.”

Even though she’d love to stay nestled in his warm embrace, she pulls back and smiles curiously at him. “You really did that? Make breakfast?”

He nods. “Yeah. We’ve got waffles cooling out there, coffee that is fresh and hot, and also a fresh fruit salad. If you were planning on using anything that I used today, I’ll go to the grocery store and pick up some more to replace it.”

“I didn’t even know I had all that in the fridge.” She frowns as she reaches back in her memory to recall if she’d bought any of that, and then she sighs as the answer comes to her. “Bruce. He most likely sent Alfred over at some point to stock the fridge.”

“Does he do that a lot?” Steve asks.

“Send me food? Sometimes. Whenever I’m here in Gotham and don’t want to stay at the Manor, he’ll occasionally have food sent over when it looks like I’m not taking time to eat. It’s all innocent. He’s just a friend.”

“I wasn’t asking for that reason. Just…he’s a good friend. Not that you need to be taken care of, but it’s nice to know you have someone watching your back.”

Diana’s frown fades, and she smiles beautifully at him, the first smile that’s felt genuine and purely hers since she’s woken up. “That’s a good way to describe it. Yes. I know he watches out for me, and it’s nice to have a friend who knows what I’ve lived through and who I really am.”

“And the rest of the League?”

“They’re good people. Wonderful people. I trust them all and have no doubts that they would have my back no matter what. But Bruce is the only one who knows the full truth about my story. Vic does, too, but he’s never spoken about it, which I greatly appreciate.” She takes his hand and squeezes it a little. “But breakfast awaits. I’ll answer any more questions you have once I’ve brushed my teeth and woken up a little more, hmm?”

“Of course.” He squeezes her hand back and heads back out to the kitchen. Diana sits still in the bed for a moment, just soaking everything in. There’s something remarkably natural in how mornings with him feel. She doesn’t feel any sense of awkwardness or discomfort over sharing the same space, and despite the time they’ve been apart, she feels like this is how they’ve always been.

She throws on a shirt that’s lying on the floor and makes her way to the bathroom, quickly brushing her teeth before walking out to the kitchen. Her footsteps are silent from thousands of years of Amazonian warrior training, and she smiles when Steve jumps a little when he turns around from pouring coffee into two mugs and finds her nearing the island counter in the kitchen.

“Jesus,” he mutters. He pauses and takes a look at what she’s wearing, and his eyes seem to expand a bit more. “Jesus.”

She glances down at the shirt and sees it’s his t-shirt that was discarded from the night before. “Do you mind? I saw it was on the floor and just picked it up since it was the first thing.”

He makes a sound in his throat and shakes his head. “I don’t mind at all. God. I was wondering where that shirt had gone to since last night, but it looks a hell of a lot better on you than it does on me.”

Diana’s smile widens, and she sits at one of the stools by the island. “So. Wow me with breakfast, and if you have any more questions, I can answer them.”

“Are we going to talk about last night?” Steve asks, glancing at her over his shoulder as he gets the bowl for the fruit salad and bringing it over to the island. “I think that’s something we should probably get out of the way first. Then I have a bunch of questions about the League I’d like to ask.”

Diana’s stomach flips and twists with the memory of the night before. The Underworld. Hades. Persephone. Even Charon with the River Styx had unsettled her, though she doesn’t want to admit it and cause Steve alarm. But she knows he’s right. If they’re going to protect themselves, they need to know what they’re protecting themselves against, and no matter how much she’d like to ignore Persephone’s foreboding words, she can’t. “Right. Last night.”

“Are you going to tell Bruce?”

Diana shakes her head, noticing Steve’s slightly surprised face. “Why would I? I won’t go running to him every time something happens. He deals with his own enemies without enlisting me for help, and I don’t need his help.”

“The god of death…is it even possible to kill the god who literally controls the dead?” Steve asks then. “I mean, how does that work?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Technically, Ares is dead, but his influence on the world of mankind was too strong to completely eradicate. That’s why war continues to happen, even despite his death.”

“Or maybe that’s how people are, even without his influence.”

Diana shrugs. “Maybe. But death is different. It’s more permanent than war. With war, you can live a lifetime and not experience it, but no one can escape death. Even as an Amazon and a demigoddess, _I’m_ not totally exempt from death, and I’m not sure that anyone is except for Hades.”

“Persephone mentioned a liaison.”

Diana presses her lips together in a worried line and nods. “She did. Whoever her liaison is, they’ve got to be human and alive. Just from what she was saying, I got the impression that she doesn’t quite have the power she needs to pass between realms, which means she’d need a liaison to do things for her over here that she can’t do herself until she gets more power.”

“And that could be anyone.”

“It could.” Diana sighs. “Our next move should be tracking energy sources. When communication between realms takes place, it releases a different kind of energy that can be traced.”

“And how do we trace it?” Steve asks, pausing in mid-reach for his fork now that a plan seems like it’s about to form.

“Bruce has a device that reads energy levels of all kinds. Whenever we’ve needed to track down whatever it was we were looking for, we’ve used that.” She pauses and tilts her head to the side, looking at the plate of waffles Steve has set in front of her but without really seeing it. “You know, this is the first time I’ve come across something from my world this serious since I knew you. I’ve fought other things from other realms, and I’ve even fought some who come directly from the mythology of the Amazons, but Ares was the strongest force until now. Now it’s the god of death and his wife, and I have a feeling they won’t be as easily defeated as Ares was.”

“Was Ares easy to defeat?” Steve asks skeptically.

She gives him a look that does most of the answering for her. “Exactly.”

“We track the energy for the next time Persephone communicates with her liaison. So that’s our next step.”

“Yes.” She sighs as she thinks about what she’s going to have to do next. “And that means I’ll have to call Bruce and involve him just enough so he’ll let me use his fancy toys.”

Steve half-smirks and half-snorts. “What happened to you not wanting to involve him?”

Diana shoots him another look, but this time she smiles. “I’ll admit that he has some fancier gadgets than I do, and I’m not above admitting when I could use them. Besides, just because I’m asking to borrow it doesn’t mean I’m letting him in on any other part of the plan.”

“What’s the rest of the plan?”

“Find the location. Go there. Find who the liaison is. Find out what they know and then figure out how to stop this whole prophecy.”

“Which brings us to a whole other topic. What the hell is that prophecy?”

Diana heaves another sigh, looking tired and frustrated at not having the answers. “I don’t know. I can put a few things together such as the hero mentioned is most likely you. There’s a reference to 100 years, which I think also has to do with you and how long you’ve been in a coma.”

“Was it really a coma if there was a mystical force causing it and controlling it?” Steve asks, his face suddenly dragging down into a worried frown. “If this is a prophecy about me, then everything that happened that night…it was all _because_ of the prophecy. No matter what either of us did, I would have ended up in a coma by the end of the night, anyway.”

Diana processes what he says, becoming more and more disturbed as she realizes the weight of his meaning. “I don’t believe that. I can’t.”

“Why not?” Steve asks and leans forward on the counter across from her. “Everything else lines up so far. One hundred years. The goddess is Persephone. Only thing I don’t agree with is the hero part—“

“No,” Diana interrupts then. Her eyes flare at him, and she gives him a long, hard stare. “No, you don’t get to minimize what you did. I don’t care if the gods say you were supposed to sacrifice yourself and become part of this prophecy because if there’s anything I’ve learned in the century I’ve been here, it’s that you make your own choices. As a child, I heard all kinds of stories about what the gods wanted us to do, their plans for us, and how we had a path we were supposed to follow in life, but I don’t believe that anymore. If you died, it’s not because the gods said you were supposed to. It was because _you_ made the choice to save the world. _You_ made the choice to go through with it, and yes, that makes you a hero. So don’t minimize what you did as if you’re not a good man.”

“Isn’t there a thing about how prophecies always come true?” Steve asks. “Because—“

“No,” she interrupts him again. “Please don’t fight with me on this. No matter what you want to believe, you’re a hero. We just can’t let it come true. That’s all. One thing at a time, yes?”

Steve pauses, all the protestations running through his mind, but he fights them back as he takes in the intense look on Diana’s face, and he makes himself nod. “Yes. One thing at a time.”

“You’re a good man, Steve Trevor,” she murmurs. Her face is softer, more gentle and loving as she reaches across the island to take his hand. “And you can’t dissuade me from believing so.”

He moves his hand so he can lace his fingers with hers, and he pauses as he lets the warmth of her skin and the gentle glow of her gaze on him seep into his memory. “That means a lot. Thank you.”

“And you know I mean it, too, yes?”

“Yes. God.” He laughs and shakes his head a little, looking down at their hands. “There’s no way I deserve you.”

“It’s not about deserve. It’s about what you believe,” she says back to him, her voice going quieter. “A very wise man said that to me once.”

Steve’s eyes lift back up and meet hers, his smile playing at the corners of his mouth now that the mood is a bit lighter. “Is that so?”

“Mmhmm.” She lifts their interwoven hands so their elbows rest on the counter while still joined together. “And that changed the way I viewed the harder aspects of life. So now I say it to you to remind you that it’s about what you believe, and I want you to know I believe in you. I believed in you in 1918, I believe in you now, and I’ll believe in you in 2118 with every moment in between.”

A muscle in Steve’s jaw twitches, and for a moment, she interprets it as anger, but then he blinks hard and tugs gently at her hand so that she leans farther over the island counter. She follows the gesture, her eyes glued to everything he does, and he closes the distance between them and kisses her. Instantly, Diana feels her heart leap up from her ribcage and into her throat, and she leans into the little gesture of affection even more.

Some things can’t be expressed in words, and she understands that no amount of words would have been able to thank her in the same way this single kiss does. She’s about to kiss him again when her phone starts buzzing. She almost ignores it, but then she pulls back, giving Steve a reluctant, apologetic grimace, and glances at her phone to see if it’s a work call.

Bruce.

Suddenly, Diana remembers that she’d asked him to have his jet ready for 10:00 this morning, and it’s 15 minutes after 10:00, and neither she nor Steve is ready for a plane trip. “Shit.”

“Did…oh my God, did you just _swear?_ ” Steve asks, completely ignoring everything else.

“Bruce,” Diana answers. She sounds out of breath and slightly panicked. “I’m so sorry. I forgot. Something…there was an incident last night. We need to stay in Gotham a little longer. Going back to Paris won’t be quite so necessary as it was yesterday.”

“Oh, good, thanks for letting me know in plenty of time.” Bruce’s dry humor comes in response at the other end of the line, and Diana resists the urge to roll her eyes, an utterly human response that has worked its way into her physical vernacular.

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, but for right now, I need another favor.”

“First, you’re going to tell me what you mean by incident.”

That familiar flicker of irritation starts in Diana’s chest, and she closes her eyes as if to shield herself off from her own feelings of annoyance. “Steve and I took a little trip to the Underworld. Now. I need to use your energy reader. The one that tracks communication between realms.”

“Wait. You went to the Underworld?” Bruce asks, continuing on as if she hadn’t said the second half of the sentence. “Do you mean the Greek Underworld?”

“Yes.” She can’t hide the impatience in her voice. “It’s a long story, and I promise I’ll tell you about it next time I see you, but I really need to borrow your shiny toy.”

“Even _I_ haven’t been to the Greek Underworld,” Bruce mutters. “But yes. You can use the tracker. Do you need any help with anything?”

“For the millionth time, no. And for the millionth time, yes, I’ll let you know if that changes. We’ll be by sometime today, and I’ll fill you in on everything that happened, ok?”

“You have the code.”

“I do.”

Bruce grunts something that sounds like a goodbye, and Diana hangs up. “I can’t believe I forgot telling him we were going to take the jet to Paris this morning. I’m usually so on top of things.”

“There’s been a lot of change over the past few days,” Steve offers. “For both of us. You’ve lived without me for longer than you’ve lived with me, and the last thing I remember is being in 1918, and now I’m in a place that couldn’t possibly be stranger to me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, genuinely sympathetic as she sets her phone down and turns her attention back to him. “I can empathize with how difficult that is. Not in the exact same circumstance, of course, but I understand how it feels to be a fish out of water in a world that’s no longer familiar to you.”

Steve offers up a half-smile, and he takes her hand again. “I know you do. I wish you didn’t. But I know you do.”

“You wish I didn’t?” She tilts her head to the side in curiosity.

“The selfless part of me wishes you didn’t know because then it’d mean you were still on Themyscira. You would’ve been spared all of the horrors of this world…all the pain that’s come with it. But the selfish part of me is so goddamn happy to have you here.” He takes a breath and shakes his head, lowering his eyes back down to the counter again. “I can’t stop wishing I could’ve protected you from all this. Not that you _need_ protection but…”

“I understand,” Diana replies, her voice quiet and soothing. “But know that it was my choice to leave Themyscira, and despite the pain I’ve felt while here, I don’t regret that decision. I don’t regret knowing you and loving you for the first time, nor do I regret losing you because _this_ is what’s real. Knowing what you have and what you no longer have are what make life real, and I could never regret that. Even if it meant having to live without you for so long while believing you were gone forever.”

“What does forever even mean to a goddess?” Steve asks. He leans forward and kisses the back of her hand. “A century is a blink of an eye. One thousand years are just a stretch of the muscles. Forever is an incredibly long time.”

“It is,” she agrees. “But if there’s one thing that’s permanent and supposed to last forever, I know it’s how I feel about you. I’ll believe in you forever, and I’ll love you forever, and that is a promise.”

“And a promise is unbreakable,” Steve adds with a smile that’s so unforgivingly beautiful, Diana forgets how to breathe.

Her voice goes even softer. “Then I promise to love you forever and forever.”

“Forever and then some,” he counters.

“This sounds an awful lot like wedding vows.” Diana’s expression changes from full on adoration to adoration mixed with easy flirtation. “Forever and ever, till death do us part.”

“If this is where you propose to me, I object.”

“I’m not proposing to you, Steve Trevor. Are you hinting that you want me to?”

“What? No, that’s not—I’m—“ He cuts himself off, flustered and indignant.

“I’m teasing you.” Diana laughs, unable to hide her amusement. “But I guess that does bring up what we are to each other. Saying you’re my boyfriend sounds so young for people as old as we are. But calling you my partner doesn’t feel right, either.”

“Are we…is this courting?” Steve asks, looking utterly confused. The irony that Steve can willingly charge headfirst into the Underworld and look as collected as ever but can’t seem to figure out a romantic term doesn’t escape Diana’s notice.

“No one calls it courting anymore. Now it’s called going out or dating. But if you’re just flirting with someone and maybe casually going out on dates with them, that’s talking.”

Steve blinks. “Well…isn’t that what you do when you go out with someone?”

“No, it’s—talking is the stage that comes _before_ the official dating confirmation between two people.”

“But then that implies that once you’re together, there’s no talking at all.”

Diana laughs again and lets go of his hand to touch his face. “You’ll catch on. I promise. For the time being, we’re not talking, and I hate to say we’re dating because it just doesn’t feel like it describes us well. We’ve never been on a date, we’ve never nervously flirted with each other and hoped that the feelings are returned…that’s kind of what the people here do when they date, and we’ve never done any of that.”

Steve is still too absorbed in trying to understand the difference between talking and _talking_ to catch onto what she’s saying, but he comes back to Earth a bit more when he feels her hand against his cheek. “I thought courting etiquette was a little strange back when I was in my time, but in this century, it’s even more confusing.”

“You found courting confusing? I never would have guessed,” she says with genuine surprise.

Steve makes a face and kind of tilts his head from side to side. “I mean, I courted girls, but…I guess the last time I courted a girl using the correct etiquette was…God. I guess it was before the War. So I’m a little rusty to say the least.”

“I don’t find you rusty at all.” Diana pats his cheek and puts her hand down. “But we really do need to find a way to label what we are to each other. I don’t particularly like labeling, but people find it easier to understand when you can put a name on it. We don’t have to do it today since Persephone has given us some more pressing matters to attend to, but get thinking up ideas.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” He can’t help grinning at her.

“What?” she asks when she notices how he looks at her.

“Nothing. I just think you’re wonderful.”

Now she has to smile back at him. “Thank you. The feeling is mutual.”

“And we can take as long as we need to figure out how to refer to each other. No rush. Nothing.”

“No,” she agrees and leans over the counter again. She kisses him with a warm sweetness he hasn’t tasted in a very long time, and when she pulls back, he’s reminded of fresh honey and all things sweet and golden.

“We’ve got forever,” he says, reaching to kiss her again.

As she closes the distance between them, she agrees one last time. “And then some.”


	16. Atonement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, oliviaofthemyscira, Rex501st, and Teksasha for commenting!
> 
> I KNOW it's been forever since I updated, and I'm so sorry! I hope y'all are still with me and haven't given up on this fic yet! Today's chapter is a little shorter than normal + it's a filler chapter setting up for the next one, but I really do hope it doesn't totally suck.
> 
> As always, I love hearing back from you guys, and again, I hope you haven't given up on my slow updating process! Enjoy =)

Even though she knows how to use it, Diana lets Bruce explain how to use the energy reader for Steve’s sake. She can’t imagine what it must be like for him to have to have everything explained to him, things that are commonplace and as simple to her as operating a gun is to him. And now, he’s been thrust into a world he doesn’t understand anymore, and he’s got to be fast tracked into it. When she’d been introduced to the world, she’d had time to get acclimated to it, learning along the way, but this time around with Steve, she feels like she’s shoving him headfirst into a whirlpool, and if he drowns, he drowns. So when Bruce explains the process of using the reader, Diana silently vows to never let Steve drown.

Throughout Bruce’s talk, she’s kept her eyes on Steve, watching him listen and orient himself with the new information Bruce presents. And Diana feels nothing less than pride. Pride at how quickly he’s picking everything up and incorporating it into the information systems inside his brain. It’s moments like these when she remembers he’s a soldier. First and foremost, Steve Trevor is an accomplished pilot and spy who had had a life in the military before she’d ever even had an idea he existed.

She remembers the picture Etta had put on the wall in France right after the Great War had ended. She remembers walking up to the picture and touching it, gazing into Steve’s young face as he’d proudly but casually stood in front of the first plane he’d been entrusted to fly. In so many ways, that younger Steve had looked exactly like the Steve she’d known and lost, but in other ways, she hadn’t been able to find the Steve she loved in his eyes. He’d been hopeful and youthful then, eager to do what was right. It’s not even that the Steve she’d met in 1918 hadn’t been hopeful or youthful—even with all the grey wisps that subtly pepper his dark blond hair, he’d only been a young man in his early 30s. However, the Steve Trevor she’d fallen in love with was a wizened Steve, a more cynical and hardened version of himself due to all of the trauma he’d been forced to witness.

Again, she takes a moment to marvel at him. When he’s in front of her like this, intelligent eyes sharply trained on Bruce as he absorbs everything Bruce says, it’s impossible for her to think of him dead. Dead. Lifeless. Nonexistent. Three words to describe everything he is not. How could he possibly have died when he’s so alive? Diana’s heart swells as she remembers the feeling of his pulse beneath her lips and the solid thrum of his heart beneath her fingertips. Vitality courses through every cell of his body, and she has no idea how she’d ever been able to accept his death in the first place.

“Got it?” Bruce asks, bringing Diana back to Earth and out of her head as his intense eyes scrutinize Steve. Whether Steve notices the pointed attention in his direction, he doesn’t show it, but he nods.

“Yes. Easy enough.”

Bruce pauses as if he’s about to make a smart comment but then thinks twice about it. His eyes drift over to Diana to check in with her. “Got it?”

“Got it.” She takes the device from him and reads the current feedback on the display screen. “So we’ll be alerted of any kind of energy surge that matches those made when our realm is breached. All we have to do is keep a close eyes on it.”

“Easy enough,” Steve says again.

Bruce frowns and folds his arms over his chest, leaning back against the metal table behind him in his lab. “Easy? None of this is easy.”

“Bruce,” Diana warns. Ever since she and Steve showed up an hour ago, Bruce has been a little bit more on edge than normal. She gives him a look that tells him to back off, but he doesn’t even look at her to pick up on the hint, though she has no doubt that were he to see her expression, he wouldn’t ease up.

“Well, it’s not,” he insists. “None of what we do is considered easy. Ask Clark. Ask Vic. Ask _anyone_ who’s lost something in our line of work, and then come tell me about how easy it is.”

“Bruce!” Diana’s snap comes out even sharper than she’d intended, but she doesn’t regret it.

“Hey,” Steve says softly as he reaches out for her arm. “It’s fine. It’s ok.”

“No, it’s not. You don’t deserve to be chewed out for something that isn’t your fault.” She mirrors his gesture by putting her hand on his arm and pushing just a little as a way to communicate to him to leave the room. However, Steve pushes back against her and shakes his head.

“You don’t have to fight my battles,” he says firmly, though not unkindly. Diana pauses and then glances back at Bruce, who stares at them with a wholly unreadable look on his face. Guilt rushes through her chest as she acknowledges her own overprotectiveness toward Steve—not only does he need simple things like a microwave explained to him, but then he has her jumping all over any potential thing that could possibly be even a half-threat. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s unfairly mothering him and acting as though he can’t defend himself, and she forces herself to lower her hand from his arm.

“I know,” she says finally. “I know.”

“I’m just trying to put things into perspective.” Bruce speaks as if a moment between Diana and Steve hasn’t just happened. “Following instructions and knowing how to read what’s on a screen aren’t some simple task that suddenly makes everything easy and the world go round again.”

“I certainly don’t think that’s the case,” Steve replies, pulling his gaze from Diana and redirecting it toward Bruce. “But compared to doing these readings by hand, it sure as hell does come across as easy. Remember—where I come from, we don’t have technology to cut the corners for us.”

“You _didn’t,”_ Bruce corrects. “Where you come from is the past. Where we are now is the present for us, the future for you, and technology isn’t just cutting corners compared to what our ancestors did because we’re lazy.”

Diana’s cheeks flush, but she bites back the comment that rises up within her longing to get out. Folding her arms over her chest, she shakes her head. “I don’t know what your problem is, Bruce, but I came here for the reader, not a dick measuring contest.”

Her choice of phrase has the desired effect, and both men look at her with unbridled shock. She lifts her eyebrows at the both of them, silently daring them to say something. “What?”

“Good Lord,” Steve mutters under his breath, pink coloring his cheeks just a little as he looks away the way he had when she’d walked in on him naked in the pools on Themyscira.

Bruce’s expression changes from mildly hostile to mildly amused. “I’ve got to admit I’m not used to hearing such…vulgar slang from you. The whole Wonder Woman, perfect hero complex you have and everything.”

Diana rolls her eyes. “Look, I’m not here to play mother to you and Steve or you and the rest of the League, ok? So that means I’m not going to stand here and encourage you two to talk about your feelings because I just want us all to get along. If calling a dick measuring contest what it is is what gets you two to stop, then that’s what I’ll do. Now. Are you done, Bruce? Or do you have some more pent up anger at the world to get out here?”

“Well, I still had some more to get off my chest, but I suppose I can save it for another time,” Bruce quips with a smirk, earning another eye roll from her. “Do you really feel the need to mother us?”

“I never said I felt the need to, but no. That being said, seeing as how that’s the way society views the only woman in a team of superheroes, I don’t want to fall into that role. The League is full of competent members, myself included. The last thing any of us needs is another mother.” Diana’s eyes grow a little distant as she thinks about her own mother. When she allows herself to remember, she can practically feel her mother’s warm hands on her face, loving and gentle as they pushed her wild dark hair back out of her eyes.

“I don’t think any of us sees you as team mother.”

“Thank you. That wasn’t the whole point of my being here, but I appreciate that affirmation.” She glances down again at the reader, telling herself not to expect to see anything there so she won’t be disappointed when she finds it still blank. “All we have to do now is wait. It’s a waiting game until Persephone’s liaison tries to contact her again.”

“Or vice versa,” Steve points out. He doesn’t look quite as pink in the face as he had only moments before, and Diana has to swallow her laugh so she doesn’t embarrass him again.

“Or vice versa,” she agrees. “Regardless, they’re breaching realms in order to communicate with each other, and I would imagine that the next part of Persephone’s plan is about to come into play. She made contact with her liaison, she made contact with us, specifically _you_ , and after having seen her myself, I don’t believe she has the kind of power that would be needed to allow her to do what she wants without a liaison. It’s just a matter of time until something happens.”

“Foreboding.” Steve holds his hand out for the device, and he looks down at it with the same kind of restless hope Diana recognizes in her own eyes. “But accurate.”

“And what are you going to do until then?” Bruce asks.

Diana meets Steve’s eyes, and she wonders the same thing herself. What comes next? Does she take him to Paris? Does she take him around Gotham? Does she keep him locked up in the apartment when she knows nothing will hurt him? None of those options seems ideal, but she knows she can’t expect Steve to hide in the shadows until she says otherwise.

“I don’t know,” she verbally admits. “I don’t know how much more we can do until Persephone and her person are in contact with other again.”

“So you can come to dinner tonight,” he says smoothly.

Diana’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “What?”

“Dinner with the League. Did you forget that was happening tonight?” Bruce wears that look on his face he always does whenever he feels proud of knowing something Diana doesn’t. He rarely gets to give her this look, but whenever he has the opportunity, he really milks it. “We planned this several months ago.”

“Dinner with the League?” Steve repeats. He looks over at Diana and notices how she looks borderline panicked, an expression he’s never seen on her before.

“It’d be a good opportunity to introduce Trevor here.” Bruce nods at Steve. “If he’s going to be around, then the League might as well get to know him, too.”

“No,” Diana says, searching for a number of excuses to give.

“You can’t hide him forever.”

She clenches her jaw a little as she ignores Steve’s eyes on her. His gaze penetrates her skin, but she won’t look at him because she knows that whatever he’s asking of her, she’ll do. “I know that, Bruce. But I don’t think the League is ready to meet him.”

“Why?” Steve interjects. “Am I really that much of an anomaly?”

Diana sighs and closes her eyes, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose as if she’s fighting off a migraine. “No. You’re not. There are anomalies far more unusual than you who are on the League.”

“Gee, that almost hurts my feelings.”

“I don’t think the League is ready to meet you because they have no clue what’s going on.” She opens her eyes then and hopes she doesn’t look as tired and as old as she feels. “They don’t know about you other than the basics. Vic…he probably knows more than he lets on because your information is Bruce’s database, which Vic has access to, but no one else knows the full story about you.”

“I remember you saying that. Your reasoning behind it, I remember that, too.” Steve steps toward her, his face growing softer as he reaches out to touch her hair. “But I’m here, Diana. You don’t need to protect me…the memory of me…nothing like that. Much to my own surprise, even, I’m alive.”

She longs to lower her head so she doesn’t have to see the sincerity she’s come to associate with him when he’s speaking just to her. But after being deprived of seeing his face for a century, she can’t bear to look away, so she doesn’t. “Is this what you want? To meet the League?”

“I think I’d like to. Yeah.” He doesn’t seem entirely sure, but he also doesn’t seem _un_ sure, either.

Diana heaves another heavy sigh, and she shrugs her shoulders in defeat. “Alright. Alright. I can’t fight the both of you. We’ll come to dinner tonight, but if we get a reading, we’re leaving, ok?”

Bruce grins, a rare but always rewarding look on him. “Perfect. I’ll tell Alfred to specifically plan a vegetarian meal for you. Trevor, you a vegetarian, too?”

Steve looks mildly bewildered, but he shakes his head. “No. I eat meat.”

“So one vegetarian meal for the lady, and the rest of us will have the usual,” Bruce says as he whips out a text message on his phone. “Wonderful.”

“Please don’t tell anyone about this,” Diana says suddenly. “About Steve.”

“You want it to be a surprise?” Bruce’s glance up and then back down at his phone is so quick that Diana has no trouble seeing how easily Batman has worked himself into Bruce’s every day life.

“I’d just prefer that information to come from Steve and me. Any questions I can answer, I’d like to, and then any that Steve can answer, I’d prefer them to hear his words directly from him. Otherwise, it’ll be too much chaos and too much back and forth between you and the rest of the League. Plus, I don’t want all the texts bombarding me until tonight.”

Bruce nods, understanding as well as only a billionaire philanthropist known throughout the country from the time he was a young child can. “Then a secret between the three of us it shall stay.”

“Until tonight,” Diana says, and Steve smiles at her.

She has no clue what to do about tonight.

* * *

“Tell me about them again.” Steve eyes her over the rim of his mug and inhales the scent of fresh coffee, leaning back into the couch cushion in Diana’s living room. “I want to make sure I have a good read of everyone.”

“Well, Clark is gentle. Fierce but gentle, and he believes the best in everyone. In some ways, he’s the male version of me. We’re both foreigners here on this Earth, and we hope for the good in people rather than expect the bad. He’ll like you right away. Vic is smart and seems like he never smiles, but he’s got a wonderful sense of humor when he’s comfortable with you. He’ll be a tough one to crack, but once he sees you aren’t a threat, he’ll relax. Then again, he already knows your background, so he might be the easiest one to sway yet.” She snaps her fingers, remembering something. “But Barry. He’ll be the quickest to be Team Steve. He likes everyone and can’t sit still, which can be sometimes irritating but mostly endearing. Out of everyone, he probably has the biggest heart. Arthur will be ruthless, and it'll probably take him a while to warm up to you, but he's a good man.  More than anything, he'll probably act like he doesn't like you just to mess with you, but you'll be able to trust him to have your back. And then Bruce…you know Bruce.”

“He was in a mood earlier, huh?” Steve asks. His tone is casual, but Diana senses a reason behind his broaching of the topic.

“He was,” she agrees with a slight frown. “He’s moody pretty frequently, though, so this isn’t exactly abnormal for him.”

“So he’s usually that crabby?”

The corner of Diana’s mouth quirks into a tiny smile at his choice of description, and she half-nods, half-shrugs. “Yes and no. He’s got a lot on his mind, and he’s also short-tempered. But today he seemed a little extra off at first.”

“Why?”

“I think…” She pauses, trying to find the right words to describe Bruce and his moods. “I think he’s lost a lot to the modern world. Which isn’t to say that you haven’t lost a lot because you certainly have, and he knows that. But what you lost was back during the War before the villains that he faces night after night were a constant threat. What he’s lost has come at the hands of the modern world and its desensitization to violence…its casual acceptance of monsters killing.”

“He wasn’t there for Ares,” Steve argues, his eyes clouding over a little with something akin to defensive anger. “Does Ares not count as violent or a monster who kills?”

Gentle as can be, she reaches out and puts her hands on his. She lowers her head down so she can kiss his knuckles, resting her cheek against the backs of his fingers as he continues to hold the mug in his hands. “He has yet to face a god. What he has faced, however, has brought him as much loss as a god can bring to this world, too. No matter how much Clark tells him he doesn’t blame him, Bruce will always feel guilty for Clark’s death. The thing that killed him was one of those monsters, and if I’m being honest, we all could have been killed while fighting it.”

Steve quiets, suddenly realizing that she could have been killed in the same fight, and he looks at her with new eyes. Throughout their short time together trying to end the War, he’d known not to worry about her or coddle her in the way he would have if she were a mortal woman thrown into the trenches. Out of everyone around them, she was the most indestructible. Even the young soldiers, eager and fresh out of basic training with the scent of freshly dyed khaki wafting around them had understood that compared to her, they were as easy to kill as a bug was to their boot. It isn’t until now that the possibility of something being powerful enough to kill her has seriously crossed his mind.

“None of that was easy,” he says when he finds the words to speak.

“It very well could have killed all of us,” she murmurs, pulling her cheek away from him and urging him to let go of his mug with his one hand so she can take it. “Bruce had all kinds of tricks and toys that he pulled out against Doomsday, but nothing was able to stop it until the Kryptonite spear, and even though he’d made that spear, I think that whole fight was the first time his inventions had failed all in a row like that. So it wasn’t easy for any of us. But specifically for him, especially once Clark had been killed.”

“How does he keep doing what he does when he feels such guilt?” Steve’s voice is as quiet as hers now, a gentle velvety murmur that sounds like how she imagines his hands skimming down her body would sound if they had a voice.

“It’s because of that guilt. At least, that’s my theory. We all have guilt to try to work out.”

“Atonement.”

“Right. Clark is alive, but Bruce is still atoning for his loss in the first place.”

“And that’s what you do, too.”

Diana can’t hide the shock on her face, and she pulls away a little bit more. “What?”

“With me. Hey…I don’t mean anything by it. But…you said it yourself that you’ll always feel guilty for not being able to do more.” Now he sets the mug down on the coffee table in front of them, and he grabs both of her hands. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it, Diana. You know I don’t blame you. I could _never_ blame you for what happened.”

“I…I know you don’t…” The words feel stuck in her throat, like she’s choking on them. She’s never thought of herself as someone who’s like Bruce. Sure, they have some things in common. They’ve both lost people they love, they want to drive out the evil in the world, and they want to protect the people around them. But to make the connection of how she handles her guilt over Steve’s death with the guilt Bruce feels over Clark’s is something she hasn’t done before, and she’s somewhat ashamed that she’s been so purposely blind to that little tie between them for this long. “I just…I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”

Steve’s eyes scan her face, worried that he’s said something wrong. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” She squeezes his hands to reassure him. “I promise. It just came as a shock to me. That’s all. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and the gods know I understand that to my very core. Atonement is something Bruce and I seek, yes, and the people we feel responsible for are incapable of holding us accountable for it.”

“That’s right.” Steve’s grasp on her is firm. “I’ll never blame you. You don’t need to atone for anything.”

“Maybe not.” She can’t look him in the eyes anymore, and so she chooses to look down at their hands clenched together. “But enough about sad things. I want to be happy with you and prepare you for dinner.”

When he puts his hand beneath her chin and tilts her head up toward him, she accepts his kiss and hungrily leans into him for more. His hands are both fire and Earth as they make her burn, as they ground her and keep her here in this world with him. As her hands go toward his belt, his hips toward her touch, she tries to tell herself that she has done nothing requiring atonement. She has always tried her best, and her best has still saved more people than she’s lost when she’s been at her worst. She has nothing to atone for.

Yet even as she silently repeats these things she needs to hear, the sentences running through her brain, she wonders how many more times she’ll need to say them before she believes them the way Steve does.


	17. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, morethanpixels, and majojoink for commenting!
> 
> In between receiving a negative review on this fic and the hell of a time I've had getting this chapter uploaded (copy/pasting like, 10 sentences at a time), here we finally are! I really hope y'all like it, and I guess I can't complain too much about a negative review seeing as how I beg for any kind of feedback each chapter, but anyway! Here we go.
> 
> Enjoy :)

Diana squirms and lets out a sound akin to a giggle, her hand reaching down to make contact with Steve’s bare shoulder. “We should start getting ready for dinner.”  
  
“What one should do and what one will do are two very different things,” Steve murmurs against her smooth, naked thigh. His voice is liquid warmth, slightly husky and a couple pitches lower. “Unless the lady objects. In which case, one will not do what he would like to do.”

“I never said I objected,” Diana says quickly. His laugh meets her ears, and she relishes the reward of the gentle sound. She hasn’t realized until recently that the sound of his laugh is unfamiliar to her. She can identify frustration, desperation, desire, anger, devastation, and pride, but pure and utter joy aren’t things he conveys very frequently. And if anything, it breaks her heart, though she’s quickly learning that anything to do with Steven Rockwell Trevor is just one more thing that has the capability to devastate her or elate her on an unmatched level. “I want to hear that more.”  
  
“Hmm?” He looks up at her and leans his slightly stubbly cheek against her inner thigh. She expects the bristly hairs to scratch, but to her surprise, they’re soft and feel nice against the thin, sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

“I want to hear that more,” she repeats. “The sound of your laugh.”  
  
“Mm.” He clearly isn’t thinking about what his laugh sounds like, and she takes her hand off his shoulder to touch the side of his cheek with her index finger.  
  
“You’re not listening.”  
  
“Yeah, I won’t lie and say I am,” he admits, though he at least has the decency to look mildly sheepish over having been caught. “But honestly, can you blame me?”  
  
“Selfishly, I certainly won’t fault you for it, no.”

“But I’m listening now. Speak away, Your Highness.” He props himself up on his elbows a little bit to support his weight better, but he still keeps his cheek against her leg. He looks at her like he expects her to sprout wings and a halo and soar up into the sky, which makes Diana both melt and feel apprehensive at the same time. Even without his saying so, she knows he sees her as some ethereal being who quite literally was fathered by the gods. He watched her battle Ares, and he had so much faith in her and her ability to save the world that he’d sacrificed his very life for her. Or at least, that’s what they’d all thought he’d done.  
  
Faith, she thinks. Faith is what he has in her, so much so that he might even be blinded by it, and Diana’s human enough to feel frightened by the strength of his faith in her. What if she fails him? What if she lets him down? How is she supposed to face him then? She knows that she wouldn’t be able to bear the disappointment in his eyes, not again. That night at the top of the tower when he’d begged her to help him end the war had been one time too many for her. If she sees that look in his eyes again, that expression of utter disappointment in her, she won’t be able to ever find it in her to wear the armor again.

“Oh, now you have nothing to say?” he teases, nudging her leg.  
  
She forces herself not to be so gloomy, and she makes herself smile at him. “I was just thinking.”  
  
“About?”  
  
“How pretty you are.”  
  
He half-rolls his eyes, but his smile and sweet smirk make her heart feel light the way it does whenever she flies. “Thanks. Now. Will you tell me?”  
  
“I said I want to hear the sound of your laugh more.” Her hand brushes a trail of whispered promises up his cheek and toward his hair. She tells herself that someday she’ll get tired of touching him so much, but she hopes to the gods she never does, nor does she imagine she ever really will. After having been without the feeling of his pulse beneath her fingertips for so many decades, she can’t see herself ever tiring of feeling it now.

“My laugh?” he questions. His face is hard to read, but more than anything else, he looks surprised. “What’s so special about my laugh?”  
  
“I don’t know what it sounds like. Not the way I know what your voice sounds like when you’re in command or when you’re being serious. And I know I’ve heard your laugh before, but it’s something I want to hear much more of.” Her heart skips as the setting sun through her living room window catches a particular spot of his hair in the perfect angle, making its dark golden glow even brighter. “I want to hear your happiness.”  
  
“Hear my happiness,” he repeats, his voice a murmur. “No one’s ever said anything like that to me before, but that seems to be kind of a recurring theme with you.”

“Someone should tell you something of that sort every day,” she says earnestly. “You deserve to have your happiness validated. Now that we’re no longer surrounded by the War, I suspect it’ll be more difficult for you to validate it for yourself.”  
  
His lips curve into a puzzled half-smile, and he tilts his head in a way that makes him look more like a grown puppy than a man who’s beaten death in a way that the God of War himself couldn’t even manage. For a man so born of violence, he gives life to the sweetest, most innocent moments around him. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Survivor’s guilt. Did they have that term back when you were alive? The first time around?”  
  
Steve shakes his head, still looking puzzled but less so as his understanding of Diana’s statement becomes clearer to him. “No, but if it’s as straightforward as it sounds, then yeah, maybe. The feeling of ‘why me’ when you come home when so many others didn’t get to?”

Diana nods, and she hates the knowing expression that darkens his features. Only someone who’s lived through battle the way he has can understand, and since she’s outlived many people on many battlefields, she’s familiar with that haunting ache. She hates that he is, too.  
  
“Yeah, I mean…yeah, I do wonder why I got to have a second chance. Even though I did a few good things here and there when I was in the military, I don’t think anything was worthy of getting a second go at life the way I’ve got now. God knows I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I know I’m a hell of a lucky guy to even get the chance to look at you again, let alone be completely naked with you this very second…but yeah, I guess it’ll take me a while to understand why I get to be happy.” He pauses and looks at her as if she knows the answer to every question in the world. “Is this what this feeling is? Happiness?”

“I can only answer for myself, and what I feel is unbelievable joy,” she says slowly, her fingers still stroking through his hair. “I thought I’d lost you. I think a part of me will always feel lost inside that moment, even though I know you’re alive and with me now. So I feel happy, but I also feel sorrow for those who will never know you weren’t killed that day. I feel sorrow for myself. At the time you died, I was so naïve and had no inkling of what I was getting into with this world here, this world that was so different from the one I’d grown up in on Themyscira. And I do feel guilty for being so joyful when I know that you and I are a rare love story that will never get to be repeated with anyone else who lost someone they love to death.”  
  
“Then how do we live with that? That guilt and happiness combined?” He still looks at her like he expects her to tell him the meaning of life and whether or not there’s a reason for all the suffering in the world. She hates her inability to give him these answers almost as much as she hates to think about her inability to see what’s coming next in Persephone’s plan.

“We just do,” she says softly. “I don’t think there are any easy answers for it. We just keep living until one day our guilt forgives our happiness.”  
  
“And what if it doesn’t happen?”  
  
“Were you always this curious?” she asks. Her smile is sincere and loving as she looks at him. “When you were a child?”  
  
He snorts and lifts his eyebrows. “You clearly never had a conversation with my mother. If you had, that wouldn’t even be a question.”  
  
Diana’s smile spreads across her lips as she imagines him, a little boy with huge blue eyes and an endless collection of questions spilling out of him a mile a minute. It’s easy for her to imagine him as a child, even though the grey strands in his hair and the scars across his shoulders remind him he’s anything but. “I don’t know much about your childhood, you know.”

“Probably a good thing,” he replies, but it’s difficult for her to tell if he means his statement in a lighthearted or serious manner. “I was a little bit of a hellion. God bless my parents—they really tried to pay for every window I broke, every teacher I annoyed half to death with my constant questions…if they’d been in charge of the War, they would’ve had everyone compensated and mostly satisfied with a compromise within three hours.”  
  
“They sound wonderful,” she says a little wistfully.  
  
“They were.” He quiets, thinking about them. It’s been a while since he’s really thought about either of them, and that heavy weight he knows as guilt settles back down on his shoulders. He knows that his mother is dead. Diana had told him when she’d caught him up on the fates of the people he’d known from 1918. His mother had died of old age in his hometown, leaving behind a man she’d remarried toward the end of the 1920s. Sammy had had a heart attack in his mid-50s, Charlie had lost one bar fight too many, and Chief had quietly slipped off the map after some time. Whenever he’s asked Diana for more information on Chief, she hasn’t had much to say, and he’s not sure if that’s on purpose or not. As for Etta, she’d lived to see her 100th birthday and had died peacefully in her sleep, her great-grandchildren sleeping soundly downstairs in the home she’d shared with her husband.

With a sense of aching sadness, the realization dawns on Steve that he never got to meet Etta’s husband. He doesn’t have a clue who she married or what her children were like. He’s never gotten to meet her great-grandchildren and hear the stories of how Etta never lost her gusto and how she remained sharp all the way up until the moment of her death. For so many years, the people he’d loved had believed they’d lost him when now, the cruel irony of the matter is that he’s the one who’s lost them.  
  
“But enough about my boring Midwestern childhood,” he says quickly, desperate to keep those thoughts at bay for now. “What about you? A childhood on Themyscira is unlike any other childhood, I’m sure.”  
  
“I was a bit of a hellion, too.” As she remembers, her dark eyes grow distant, and her face softens with nostalgia. “And being the only child on the island, I was spoiled far more than I ever should have been.”

Steve shrugs. “Eh, I think you turned out pretty ok.”  
  
“Just ok,” she agrees with a teasing smile. “Children these days have all kinds of different upbringings than the ones we had, though the beauty of being alive is never having the same one experience as the person next to you. There might be things you can relate to, but no one person’s background is the exact same as another person’s. To me, that’s beautiful.”  
  
“That’s the kind of life I wanted to keep safe.” Steve’s expression turns thoughtful now. “For everyone around me, I mean. I wanted everyone to keep living their lives the way they were supposed to, and that meant ending the War.”  
  
“I’m just glad you missed the one in the 1940s.” Diana’s voice goes quieter, her face more pained. “Selfishly, I’m glad you’ve been spared of witnessing those horrors firsthand.”

Steve wants to ask her about her time during the second World War, but he’s a good enough reader of body language and human emotion to see that that’s the last thing in the world she wants to discuss. He’s also tactful enough to not draw attention to her hesitance, choosing instead to kiss the inside of her knee and receive the reward of her open, beautiful smile.  
  
“We don’t have time for that now.” Regret tinges her voice, and she sighs. “We spent too much time talking, and now we really do have to get ready for dinner. Look at us—we don’t have a stitch on us, and we’re supposed to be setting a good first impression for the League tonight.”  
  
“’We’?” he repeats with lifted eyebrows. Reluctantly, he untangles himself from the long, lean muscles of her legs and feels around for his shirt on the floor. “The League already knows you.”

“Yes,” she replies, her voice careful as her eyes take in the sight of him naked and beautiful in front of her. “But they don’t know me with you.”

* * *

By the time Diana and Steve screech to a halt in the circular driveway in front of Wayne Manor, they’re flirting with the threshold of tardiness. Steve’s button down and slacks are perfectly ironed, his tie straight, and he doesn’t look like he’s just spent the two hours prior to dinner wrapped up inside his gorgeous half-Amazon, half-Greek Goddess girlfriend/partner/lover/whatever the hell they’re going to call themselves. Diana, on the other hand, has been a nervous wreck. Nothing in her closet had seemed to fit the occasion, which was casual. It’s just a casual dinner, she keeps telling herself, no different than any other dinner she’d had with the League in the past, and yet, she feels the pressure to prove something to her colleagues. What exactly she needs to prove, she doesn’t know yet, but she has no doubt it’ll hit her when she least expects it.

If Steve is nervous, he’s doing a good job of hiding it, and Diana genuinely envies him. She shoves the gear into Park and practically yanks the keys out of the ignition with one hand, only managing to not rip the car door off its hinges when she catches a questioning glance from Steve.  
  
“Barry and Clark will be good ones, Vic will take a while but he’ll be good, Arthur will be difficult,” he recites to her as they walk up the steps in front of Wayne Manor to the front door. In his hands, he carries a bottle of wine that Diana shoved at him on their way out of her apartment.  
  
“It’s a hit, it always is,” she’d said. More of a beer guy than a wine guy, though he’s certainly had his fair share of experience with wine, he takes her word for it.  
  
“Or at least he’ll play difficult,” Diana corrects him.

“I know. But if I tell myself he’ll be difficult, then I’m preparing myself for the worst, and that’s the best I can do, right?” Steve asks. His nerves betray him then in the tone of his voice, and she looks over at him with a mild look. He catches her eye and nods. “Right. I’m overthinking it. Right.”  
  
“You infiltrated the Germans, Steve. You’ll be fine here.”  
  
“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “I can be someone else, but being me? Who the hell is that guy?”  
  
Diana doesn’t get to answer because the giant front door has swung open, and Alfred’s dry but friendly smile greets her on the other side. “Alfred! So wonderful to see you again.”  
  
“Long time, no see, Miss Prince,” Alfred smartly quips. “You, too, Captain Trevor.”

Steve gives a tightlipped smile and lifts the bottle of wine in his hands a little higher. “I’ve got wine.”  
  
He hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but he has, and the words are out with no chance of taking them back. Alfred, however, gives no indication of finding the encounter awkward, and he takes the bottle. “Thank you, Captain. Master Bruce and company will be delighted to see that this beloved wine has made a return.”  
  
When Alfred turns his back to them to lead them to the dining room, Diana gives Steve a smug look out of the corner of her eye. Even though she isn’t saying a word, Steve can just hear her telling him, “I told you it’s a hit.”  
  
Walking through Wayne Manor as a guest is different from walking through it as a science experiment. If Diana were to know he thinks of himself as a science experiment, as an anomaly, she’d be horrified and insist that he’s anything but that, but Steve knows Bruce would agree with him. With his wacky Amazon-enhanced biology that most likely includes a healing factor so strong it’s kept him alive for 100 years while in a coma, he can’t see himself as fully human. He’s not even sure if Diana would still classify him as 100% human now that his cells have been altered so drastically.

Diana slows outside a big pair of double doors, and she turns to Steve. Alfred has the decency to give them privacy, which she’s unspeakably thankful for, and she takes a breath. “Are you ready?”  
  
Steve thinks back to when they’d been in the Underworld, and she’d asked him if he was sure he wanted to go into Hades’s castle. He’d said yes then, and he says yes now, nodding his affirmation. “Of course.”  
  
“They’re not scary. Unusual. Loud. A little…out there. But they’re no scarier than I am.”  
  
“And you’re not scary at all.”  
  
Diana smiles, the first sign of relaxing he’s seen in her since they’d started getting washed up and dressed for the evening. “Right. Ok. Alright. I think it’d be best if I go in first and say a little something. If I go in with you straight away, then there’ll be no warning at all, and…well…sometimes surprises don’t go over well with everyone.”

“Ah…ok. Noted.” Steve thinks about asking her what she means but decides against it. Sometimes it’s better not to know, at least for the sake of the anxiety he already feels pooling in the pits of his stomach.  
  
“Ok.” She takes in a deep breath and then lets out. She starts to go into the dining room, but then she pauses, turning toward him and kissing him. Whether she does it to boost her own morale or his, neither of them is sure, but by God, Steve will never find it in him to complain if that’s what she needs for a little boost.  
  
Shoulders back, head up, Diana’s face melts into her usual expression of quiet confidence. When she walks, her movements are full of a sensual but purposeful grace, and Steve can only imagine the reactions of everyone when she walks into the room in her dark fitted pants, low heels, and blue flowing blouse. He thinks of how she’d looked at Ludendorff’s ball, of how absolutely heart-stoppingly gorgeous she’d been then, and his heart suddenly feels full of emotions he’ll never be able to put words to.

Inside the dining room, Diana smiles and greets the League members. Barry and Vic give her a hug, Clark and Arthur a chaste kiss on the cheek, and Bruce a warm nod and a half-hug. “Sorry I’m late. I was a little caught up with something important.”  
  
“Superhero stuff or Louvre stuff?” Barry asks and then frowns. “How long have you been in Gotham? I didn’t even know you were here.”  
  
“Just a couple of days,” she replies as Arthur snorts loudly.  
  
“I’ve been here for three weeks, and he hasn’t asked me once what I’m doing here,” the half-Atlantean remarks. “And just to ease everyone’s very obvious concern, I’m here for business because there’s no way in hell I’d be caught here for pleasure.”  
  
“Well, you’re here for the trial,” Barry says as if that’s the most obvious answer. “It’s been all over the national papers, and since you’re the one most affected by the Fisherman, then of course you’d be here.”

“Fisherman escaped today, so I suspect Arthur’s business here will be done soon, anyway,” Bruce interjects. His gaze turns to Diana. “So. Diana. What does bring you to Gotham?”  
  
Diana spots Clark’s eyes drifting away from her and toward the doorway where he’s most likely picking up on Steve, and she moves a little in that direction. “I’ve brought someone with me tonight.”  
  
“A date? Oh my God, did you bring a date?” Barry asks, his voice louder than usual. Vic has been silent up until this point, but when Diana catches his eye, he appears far calmer than everyone else, which is all the confirmation she needs to know that he’s already been clued in to tonight’s surprise via the connections to Bruce’s databases he has literally wired into his head.

“It’s going to be a long story, and we’ll answer any questions you have, but I need everyone to keep a calm head about this,” she says evenly. Clark still hasn’t said anything, his gaze directed toward the doors in a way that lets her know he’s doing his entire scan of Steve’s body chemistry to make sure Steve isn’t a robot or something that isn’t human.  
  
“You totally brought a date!” Barry exclaims.  
  
“No shit, Sherlock,” Arthur adds, looking wary but reluctantly curious. “So who is he? Or she?”  
  
“Steve Trevor,” Clark says suddenly.  
  
“What?” Barry’s eyes practically explode out of his head.  
  
“Isn’t he dead?” Arthur asks. Vic gives him a warning look, but he shrugs it off. “What? I’m not saying anything that isn’t exactly common knowledge.”

Diana sighs heavily and surveys the room. It’s not like this is going badly, but this isn’t exactly the kind of reception she’d been hoping for. Truthfully, she’d been hoping for no one strangling Steve or blasting at him while screaming accusations of being an intruder, and so far, none of that has happened, which she’s grateful for, but she doesn’t know how to do any of this tactfully. “I have Steve Trevor with me tonight. Like I said, it’s a long story, but we can answer any questions.”  
  
“Where is he?” Arthur’s eyes narrow, suspicious and guarded now.  
  
“Out in the hall,” Clark replies.

“Ok, stop,” Diana says. Her voice is loud and commanding the way that it is whenever they’re in the thick of the fight, and they look to her for their next move. She takes command of the situation the way she takes command of the battle, and she lets her gaze fall on each of them. “I haven’t told all of you my history aside from the basics. You know that I’ve been here since 1918, and you know I lost someone I loved during that time, and you know his name was Steve Trevor. Is. Is Steve Trevor. Because of a very long story, he’s alive, and I’ve brought him here with me tonight to do the courtesy of…of letting you into a part of my life I haven’t shared with you before. And I want to do this my way. Not with X-Ray vision or answering questions for me. He is part of my story, and you are going to meet him my way. Is that clear?”

She scans everyone’s faces, looking for their reactions. Barry nods and has the decency to look apologetic, Clark looks outright ashamed of himself, Vic nods in that quiet, firm way he has, Arthur gives a little half-shrug, and Bruce just stares at her, which is his own way of agreeing to the terms, more or less. Again, she takes a breath and glances toward the double doors where Steve waits in the hallway beyond. “Good."

Her heart threatens to beat right out of her chest, bursting through her bones and her skin until it’s exposed in the air for everyone to see, but she swallows it down and walks back out to the hall. She doesn’t know what everyone’s thinking, but she doesn’t care to know. When she turns around and walks back into the room, Steve by her side, she keeps her head held high.  
  
“Steve Trevor, this is everyone. Everyone…” She turns and looks at Steve, looks at how he holds himself so tall and so sure of himself. “This is Steve Trevor, the man I lost 100 years ago.”


	18. Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, Felix787, LScribbles, MMonster, and HotWhitford for commenting!
> 
> So sorry for the delay in updating! With the holidays on top of the usual every day duties, it's been a little harder to find the time to sit down and whip out a chapter. So if you're still here, again, thank you for your patience!
> 
> As always, I love getting feedback from you guys. Everyone's been so lovely and supportive, and I can't say just how much I appreciate every single comment I get. When I say it makes my day, I mean it. So. Here we go, I'm sorry again for the delay, and I hope you enjoy! :)

Despite the disbelief Diana has been expecting from everyone, she notices that disbelief is probably the last thing anyone is feeling. No one seems to find Steve’s reappearance to be a huge shock, and she eventually has to resign herself to the fact that not much can shock the League anymore. After fighting all the hard to believe creatures and metahumans they have over the past year, one more person coming back from the dead is no more of a surprise than a man dressing up as a clown and threatening to blow up the entire world. They’re used to strangeness.

However, she detects suspicion amongst all of them except for Bruce and Vic. Bruce is already more than aware of the situation, and ever since joining the League and realizing the extent of his powers, Victor’s had access to all of Bruce’s digital files on Diana’s past. And her past includes Steve. If anything, Vic is curious in that quiet way of his, and she catches him watching Steve in that way he does whenever he’s trying to figure out how something ticks. What makes Steve tick? Part of her wants to tell Vic that if he finds out, she’d love to know.

But just because Vic and Bruce have accepted Steve’s presence doesn’t mean that everyone else has. Arthur, for example, looks like he’s two seconds away from launching himself at Steve, which was to be expected, but she hasn’t expected to feel as oddly protective of him as she does of Steve. She wants the League to like Steve, but the new secret wish she’s discovering within herself right now is that she wants Steve to like the League. And getting punched by Arthur certainly isn’t the way to warm up to a new team of super friends.

Clark looks apprehensive, though not as confrontational as Arthur, and he keeps glancing over at Diana. His watchful eyes read her for any cues that should alert him to danger, but she gives him none. The man in front of them is Steve Trevor, and she trusts this man more than she’s ever trusted anyone. As she explains more of her history with Steve, Clark’s shoulders loosen considerably, the tension draining away, but he doesn’t fully relax.

And Barry? Diana can’t quite get a read on how he’s accepting all of this news. One moment he seems delighted, the next suspicious, and then he’s nervous, only to be delighted once more. Just like his physical body, Barry’s emotions and reactions can’t seem to find stillness, either, but that’s one of the things about him that endears him to her the most.

By the time she’s done explaining, Steve looks just as wary of the League as they look of him. She glances over at him and then back at her teammates. “Are there any questions? For Steve or for me?”

“Wait, so you’re telling us that your boyfriend from World War I is back from the dead, and so…what now? Is he going to be part of our team? Another Justice League member? What can he bring to the table?” Arthur asks gruffly, eyeing Steve critically.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Diana admits. “He’s only been back for a short while, and we’ve been a little…caught up in some things that have required our professional attention.”

“Technically, I didn’t die,” Steve adds. It’s the first time he’s spoken in front of the League. While Diana told their story, he’d been quiet, knowing that they needed to hear it from a trusted member of their team first. Barry’s quick blinking eyes examine him as if he’s surprised the odd new specimen on display can speak. “I mean…I guess I did, but really, it was just a coma.”

“’Just a coma,’” Clark repeats. “That sounds so harmless.”

“Ok, as someone who’s been in a coma, can I just say that it’s not harmless?” Barry interjects, speaking in his usual rapid way as if he can’t get his mouth to work as quickly as his brain does. “Comas are far more serious than being reduced to a ‘just’ description.”

“Death isn’t exactly harmless, either,” Bruce counters, and Clark tries to suppress his amused grin.

“Hey. This isn’t the Coma Olympics,” Vic interrupts. He nods back toward Diana and Steve. “That’s not what’s important right now. So. Let them talk.”

Steve clears his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. He’s never had an issue with standing in front of people and speaking. For a spy, he feels completely comfortable having eyes on him all at once. Maybe it’s the soldier in him more so than the spy, but he’s used to enjoying his role as the one at the head of the table giving the orders. He doesn’t like the term “leader,” though. That much he knows. The title of leader comes with a huge responsibility, one that he recognizes he carries, anyway, but one he doesn’t wish to acknowledge nonetheless. When he’s the leader, he’s saying he takes responsibility for everyone who dies because of him. He’s done that before, and he hates the feeling of knowing that people lost their lives because of him, because of his decisions. And as much as Steve believes in being accountable for the negative consequences of his actions, he can’t believe in himself as a leader.

So despite the fact that he’s usually very comfortable speaking to a group of people, he finds that he’s anything _but_ very comfortable as he stands with all of the League staring at him. “So…yeah. I guess I might have died, but really, the main point is I was in a coma for 100 years. And now I’m not. So.”

“Professional attention,” Clark says then as he changes the subject. “What does that mean?”

Diana’s eyes cut toward Steve and then back over to settle on Clark. “There have just been a few complications that have come with Steve’s awakening. It’s nothing major, and we’re handling it, but it’s something we’ve been focused on since he’s come back.”

“What is it?” Barry asks. His fingers drum over the tabletop. “Is it bad?”

“We have it covered,” Diana reassures and gives him a smile to support her words. If she feels Steve stare, his disapproval that radiates off of him, she doesn’t give any notice. “Any other questions?”

“How do you know he’s legit?” Arthur asks.

“He’s legit,” Clark says before Diana can answer. “He’s got human biology, inside and out.”

“I can back that up,” Vic adds.

Steve gets a funny look on his face, but he doesn’t say exactly what’s on his mind at that moment. “Yeah, last I checked, I’m pretty human.”

“It never hurts to check. You wouldn’t have been the first non-human thing we’d experienced,” Arthur says with a shrug, still eyeing him as if he’s not sure he quite buys that Steve’s fully human.

“But he’s human,” Diana says quickly to put an end to the discussion. “He’s human. The real deal. Not some creature or magic trick from the past. He’s a living, breathing human from my past, and he’s now here.”

“Is he considered one of us?” Barry pipes up again. “A metahuman? Because surviving a plane explosion isn’t something the average human being does.”

Diana carefully surveys Steve, considering this question for the first time. “I…don’t know. His biology, while human, has undergone some changes due to the healing pools on Themyscira. We know that he can survive an explosion, but we don’t know if he has any other enhanced abilities.”

“I’d classify him as a metahuman,” Bruce says. His sharp eyes take Steve into consideration again. “He’s classified that way in ARGUS’s files.”

The whole table falls silent, and everyone looks back and forth between Bruce, Steve, and Diana, not entirely sure of how to take this new information. Diana blinks, just as surprised as everyone else, and she purses her lips. “He’s what?”

“ARGUS has him listed as a metahuman,” Bruce repeats coolly.

Diana quickly scans the rest of the table, and then she takes a breath. “Bruce, may I speak with you for a moment?”

“No, wait, I want to hear this,” Arthur argues, earning a hard look from Diana. “I do. If he’s going to be hanging around here, and it looks like he is, I want to know more. We’re all risking our identities and our lives by being in the same room with this guy, you know. We have personal, private lives, and that’s why we don’t go parading around with our real names stamped across our foreheads.”

The tension in the room grows as Diana narrows her eyes at him. Anger and frustration flare up inside her chest, and she forces herself to take a couple of seconds not to lash out. “I never would have brought him here if I didn’t trust him with my life. I would _never_ endanger anyone at this table. Steve isn’t just another guy off the street. He’s the only one who knew me when I was in my own home of Themyscira. The _only_ one. Has any of you known me since then? Did any of you get to see the land I come from?” Her eyes study every face at the table, and she nods just once, tense. “I didn’t think so. But Steve has. He knew me before any of you did. So I’d think the real question is whether or not I’m right in my belief in each of you to keep his secret as dearly as you keep your own.”

Chastised, Arthur looks away, and he kind of shrugs a little. “We’re all worried about the people we love.”

“Exactly.” Diana’s voice softens, and she looks at Steve, who gestures at her with his head.

“Can I have a moment?” he asks quietly, and she nods. Quickly, she excuses herself and walks with him out into the hall.

“What is it?”

“I really appreciate what you’re doing for me. I promise I do.” His voice is careful, his manner patient as if he’s dealing with an unhappy child. “But I’m going to need to speak for myself. If these questions are for me, I need to be the one answering them. It’s the only way they’re going to see me as a person and not as some strange guy who’s attached to you.”

She sighs, all the tension draining from her shoulders, and she suddenly looks exhausted. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? The whole answering for you and being too protective.”

“It’s sweet,” Steve replies. She notices that he’s carefully confirming her guess, and she loves him all the more for still taking the time to care about her feelings when he’s probably unbelievably frustrated with her inability to let him speak for himself. He reaches out and touches her cheek. “It means you love me, and you care about me, and I’m so, so lucky to be the recipient of that because…God, because you’re you. No one has ever loved me like this. But you can’t always protect me. As much as you want to…it just isn’t possible.”

“I know.” She closes her eyes. She can handle him looking at her with anger, disbelief, and frustration, but she can’t handle this overly gentle look on his face right now. His intention is for her to feel better, but if anything, she feels worse because she _knows_ he wants her to know he isn’t angry with her. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he says back to her and turns his hand so he’s gently cupping her face. “I know you have only the best intentions, but…” He laughs a little. “I’m going to go crazy if I can’t speak for myself.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, her voice and face regretful. “Keep reminding me when I do it. It’s like I know I’m doing it, but I can’t stop it from happening.”

“Protecting people is part of who you are,” he says simply. “You’re Wonder Woman.”

“Sometimes I think I’d like to be a normal person.” The words are out before she even realizes they were thoughts in her head. Her eyes snap open, and she looks at him with all the shock she feels jolting around inside her chest.

Steve frowns as he sees the alarmed, almost panicked look in her dark eyes. “Diana?”

“I…I’ve never said that before,” she murmurs. She searches his face as if she can find the answers buried beneath his skin, and she blinks as she processes her own statement. “I’ve never…wanting to be someone I’m not…” She stops and takes a moment to collect herself. “I just surprised myself. That’s all.”

“I think we all have a tendency to do that,” Steve reassures. He reaches out for her again, this time taking her in his arms in a warm, gentle hug. “It’s part of being human.”

“But I’m not human.”

“Well, you’ve lived here long enough, so I think you qualify as an honorary human.”

Despite herself, she laughs a little and then burrows her face that space where his shoulder and his neck meet. If she had to choose one part of his body that she loves the most, she’d choose this little spot right here. She’s right where she can feel his pulse alive and dancing against his throat, and the strong support of his shoulder is there for her, too. She deeply inhales his comforting scent and smiles as she catches the slightest whiff of the soap she keeps in her bathroom. As much as she loves him, she really doesn’t know much at all about him, and that even includes what kind of soap he likes. It isn’t until he asks her what’s so funny that she even realizes she’s laughing.

“I don’t know what kind of soap you like.”

Steve pauses, and he wonders if he heard her correctly. “My…soap preference? That’s what’s on your mind right now?”

She nods against his chest and then pulls back a little. “You smell like my soap, and I was just thinking that I don’t know what kind of soap you like.”

He frowns. “There’s more than one kind?”

Diana laughs again at that and shakes her head as she reaches up to kiss him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re adorable?”

“Are you making fun of my male ignorance or my 1918 ignorance?”

“Neither. I’m loving you.” She bumps the tip of his nose with hers and lets him move his arms so that one loops around her waist and the other reaches for her hand to take it in his. “Are we dancing again?”

“Mmhmm.”

“The League’s waiting for us.”

“Just a quick dance.”

“A quick one?”

“A quick one.”

“Ok.”

She leans into the solid comfort of his body and lets him gently guide them in a couple circles before he pulls back and kisses her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, though without as much guilt this time. “I mean it. And I’m going to do my best not to jump all over you and speak for you.”

“I appreciate it, angel.” The endearment is still new between them, and Diana isn’t sure how to feel about it, but she thinks she likes it. She’s never been one for pet names of affection since that wasn’t something she’d grown up with on Themyscira. Affectionate touches and gestures had been common but pet names not so much. She’d learned that quickly when she’d first come to this world. Even now, she remembers the first time she’d been called “love” in a store in London and how Etta had had to nearly drag Diana out of the store to tell her that the shopkeeper wasn’t being overly familiar with her in a disrespectful manner.

“But I don’t understand,” Diana had protested. “Why would he call me love? I am _not_ his love.”

Back then, Diana hadn’t acknowledged the fact that maybe _that_ had been the problem more than anything else. Steve’s loss had still been fresh, and she hadn’t been able to understand the concept of being another person’s love when she couldn’t get Steve’s voice telling her he loved her out of her head.

“I know,” Etta had said, sympathetic and patient as ever as she’d looped her arm through Diana’s. “It’s an endearment. Something you call someone when you’re being friendly.”

Diana touches his cheek before reluctantly pulling away. “I’m going to run down to the kitchen and see if I can hunt down an extra bottle of wine. I have a feeling we’re going to need it tonight.”

“Planning on getting drunk?” Steve asks with a grin.

“I can’t get drunk,” she points out and kisses his cheek one last time. “I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll be here.”

Steve watches her move through the hallway. Even the way she walks exudes confidence and purpose, and he admires that 100 years later, she has enough of a sense of who she is and who she’s become to be able to carry herself that way. He shouldn’t be surprised, though. After all, she _is_ Wonder Woman. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement, and he switches into alert mode, turning to identify the source.

“Hi,” Clark says, shutting the door to the dining room behind him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“No, no, it’s…it’s fine,” Steve replies. He doesn’t know what to say, especially now that Diana isn’t here. He squints his eyes at the man in front of him and studies him as he remembers what Diana has told him. Clark is a good guy from the Midwest, much like Steve himself, and he’s cautious about newcomers but welcoming. Most of all, he’s kind, and that’s the quality that Steve knows attracts Diana’s respect and fondness more than anything else. “Diana went to conjure up another bottle of wine.”

“I heard.” Clark’s smile is apologetic. “Sorry. I don’t mean to eavesdrop—the whole super-hearing thing is part of my Kryptonian biology.”

“Right.” Steve snaps his fingers as his memory comes back to him. “Diana did mention that you have special powers. Like flying and enhanced hearing.”

“Just to name a few.”

Steve waits for Clark to go wherever it is he’s headed, but the Kryptonian doesn’t move. An awkward moment passes, then another, and Steve fights the urge to clear his throat to break the silence. Silently, he sends a plea to Diana to hurry the hell up and save him from this uncomfortable encounter. Funny, he thinks to himself, he’d just finished telling her he doesn’t need her to save him all the time, and now here he is wishing she were here to do that exact thing.

“So Diana told you I died?” Clark says then, grabbing Steve’s attention.

“She…” Steve thinks about lying. He doesn’t know if he’s ratting Diana out by confirming she’s told him something that Clark might consider personal, but he catches the steadiness of Clark’s gaze and understands that he probably already knows the answer but is asking out of politeness. “Yes.”

“We’ve got that in common.”

“I’m still not sure I died.”

Clark shrugs. “Is any of us really immortal?”

“Can anyone answer that?” Steve counters, and Clark smiles.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “All I know is I can speak for my own experience, and I died, which was a pretty nasty wakeup call, really. I’d thought I was invincible up until that point, and then before I knew it, I was dead.”

“Do you have any memories?” Steve asks before he can stop himself. “Of being dead?”

Clark’s gaze gives nothing away as to what he’s thinking or feeling as he looks at Steve, and for a moment, he doesn’t reply. But then he nods a little. “I do.”

“What was it like?”

“Quiet.” Clark puts his hands in his pockets, a gesture that seems oddly childlike for a man as tall and bulky as he is. “Do you remember the coma?”

“Vaguely.”

“What was _that_ like?”

Steve pauses as he thinks of the right way to answer Clark’s question. Sometimes he has very vivid memories of—what he silently refers to as—his century long nap, and other times, he’s not sure if his brain is filling in the gaps of all that lost time. The brain is unpredictable and will do things like that—he remembers reading all about it. Or had someone told him? Or had he dreamed it? “It’s like you’ve got one foot stuck inside a dream, and the other foot is stuck in reality, so you’re torn in two between your dream world and the real world, I guess.”

“That sounds unsettling.”

“It…yeah. Unsettling is a good word.” Steve shifts his weight and then folds his arms across his chest, his eyes darting over to Clark. “Would you say you know her well? Diana?”

Instantly, Clark’s expression turns lighter, and he smiles again. “I know her as well as she’ll let me.”

“So she’s been pretty closed off?”

“A little. Before tonight, I didn’t know her story. At least, not in its entirety. I knew that she’d lost someone named Steve Trevor during the first War, but other than that, I didn’t know anything else. And closed off isn’t exactly the phrase I would use. She’s…” Clark squints, thinking. “Private. She’s private.”

In Steve’s mind, Diana as a private person doesn’t make sense. The Diana he remembers is open and unapologetic about who she is. God, he remembers her in London and how openly she’d shown her bare legs in front of everyone without a second thought. At the time, he hadn’t been so charmingly amused by her as much as worried she’d attract attention from a society that deemed a woman’s legs shameful, but now, he remembers that quick little spike of panic in body with fondness. One of the things he’d admired so much about her was her refusal to apologize for who she was or where she’d come from.

“I kind of got that feeling.”

“It makes sense, though,” Clark offers. “She’s been through a lot. Lived through even more. She’s seen far more than the rest of us have, and that’s saying something when you look at everything we’ve seen and dealt with just in the last year.”

“Was she happy?” Steve asks suddenly. He hopes he doesn’t look like he’s begging for any scrap of information he can get about Diana and who she’s become in the years since he first met her, but then he realizes he doesn’t care. He needs to hear the answer, and he doesn’t care if he looks desperate.

Again, Clark takes a moment to think about his answer. “She wanted to be.”

Steve gives him a wry half-smile in response. “I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.”

“It was. For a while, I don’t think she wanted to be, but then something in her changed, and I think she wanted to be.” Clark looks hard at Steve, suddenly sincere. “And now she is.”

For the hundredth time tonight, Steve doesn’t know what to say, and he looks down at the floor with a small smile and a shake of his head. “She deserves it.”

“She does,” Clark quietly agrees. Silence passes between them again, though this time it’s not uncomfortable. It’s not _comfortable_ per se, but the awkward element is considerably lessened, and Steve no longer wishes Diana would hurry up and get there. “If Diana trusts you, I trust you. The League does, too. As far as Arthur is concerned, he’s more interested in seeing how many buttons he can press. Take it from me, his bark is far worse than his bite.”

Steve blinks. “His…what?”

Clark turns sheepish, which looks odd on the face of the man Steve knows to be Superman, and he offers up a self-deprecating grin. “Modern lingo. It means he talks tough, but he won’t actually beat you up.” Then he shrugs. “At least I hope.”

Steve laughs, and he feels himself relax a little more as he shakes his head in response. “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see on that. As of right now, I kind of like being alive, so I’d like to keep it that way for as long as I can.”

A private emotion passes through Clark’s icy blue eyes, a quick flicker, and then it’s gone. “Yeah. I like being alive, too.”

“Clark?” Diana’s voice comes from down the hall, and both men turn to look at her. She’s carrying two bottles of wine, one in each hand, and she looks concerned over seeing the two of them together. “Is everything ok?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies. “Just talking shop.”

The concern drains away from her features, and she raises an amused eyebrow at him. “Really? Talking shop?”

Clark grins and nods his head toward the dining room. “I just came out to make sure everything was ok after that little fiasco with Arthur in there.”

“I learned a new phrase,” Steve adds. “Arthur’s bark is worse than his bite.”

Surprise flashes over Diana, and she takes a moment to register what he’s just said before smiling and laughing. “Ok. Yeah. You did learn something new. Look at you. Before we know it, you’ll be inventing new phrases for the rest of the world to know.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Steve mumbles.

Diana steps forward and gestures toward the dining room. “Come on. Let’s go back in and hope round two goes a little better.”

Clark is the first one to turn and get the door, and as he does so, Steve looks over at Diana. Like him, she doesn’t appear to be entirely at ease, but compared to how she was when she’d gone off to get the wine, she certainly looks less tense. After a couple seconds, she feels his stare and turns to look at him. She smiles.

_Yeah_ , Steve thinks, catching the lovely glow of her happiness. _I really like being alive_.


	19. Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, oliviaofthemyscira, Rex501st, Tobikeeper, and Felix787 for commenting!
> 
> Thank you so, so much for taking the time to leave feedback. It helps keep me on track, and I appreciate it more than I can say!
> 
> I feel like the last couple of chapters have been a little slower on the plot so here we're getting back into the thick of things both emotionally and structurally! I wish I could give an estimate of how many chapters I have left, but truthfully, I have no idea. It could be 2 more chapters, it could be 5 more. Anyway, if you're still hanging in with me, then thank you! I couldn't be more grateful to know that there are people who do enjoy this ambitious endeavor.
> 
> As always, I love to hear back from y'all, so please don't hesitate to drop me a little feedback before you leave. Enjoy!

The rest of the night goes smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it can. Arthur no longer looks at Steve like he’s a guard dog, and Steve is an intruder, and Barry has taken to him to the point where by the time dessert is served, he looks like he and Steve are old buddies. As Diana observes all this interaction take place, she feels good. She feels warm. Proud. Seeing her current team make an effort to get to know the last remaining member of her old team means more to her than she can think to express, and she catches herself not eating and just watching them all more often than not.

But she doesn’t forget what Bruce had said about Steve being classified in ARGUS’s files as a metahuman. This little piece of news is the first time she’s hearing about it, and she has no idea how long Bruce has known and just hasn’t said anything to her. Part of her wants to think that he thinks he already told her, but she knows Bruce wouldn’t just let something this big and important slip from the front of his memory. He purposely hadn’t told her, and she wants to know why.

Before much longer, the League starts bidding their good nights. Some of them are staying in Wayne Manor overnight because they’re working with Bruce on some things, but others—like Clark—are looking forward to going home to their loved ones—like Lois. As Diana hugs Clark and tells him to give Lois her warmest regards, she catches Bruce talking to Steve away from everyone else. She can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but neither man seems to be happy. That being said, neither of them seems to be _unhappy_ , and at this point, Diana figures she’ll take what she can get.

Clark leaves, and Diana waves from the door for an appropriate amount of time before closing it and turning toward Bruce and Steve. They’re still deep in discussion, and it isn’t until she’s standing right beside them that they realize it’s no longer just the two of them engaging in conversation anymore.

“Hi,” she greets. She doesn’t want to come across as accusing or suspicious. One thing these two men have in common is a strong dislike for distrust from their peers, though she finds it ironic since they both have such secretive lives. Bruce, the masked knight of Gotham. Steve, the last spy of his era. Two very romantic ideas that are trapped inside two very troubled men.

“That went well, yeah?” Steve asks.

“Yes, I think it went well,” she confirms with a glance toward Bruce and then at Steve. “Are you ready to go?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you,” Bruce interjects before Steve gets a chance to reply. “I was just filling Trevor in on some things that I think you need to know, too.”

“What about?” she asks, careful to keep her nonchalant tone so as not to put him on the defensive.

“ARGUS.” His gaze is quiet, understated, and Diana has a feeling this is the closest she’ll ever get to an apology from him in regards to withholding information. “His files.”

“Amanda Waller has apparently been updating them since I’ve woken up,” Steve fills in. “Bruce has a special kind of technology device that…what was the word you used? Bugged?”

Bruce nods. “Bugged.”

“He bugged Waller’s files and has access to mine, so that’s how he saw I’m officially classified by them as a metahuman.”

“But that’s not even the fun part,” Bruce says drily, and he folds his arms across his chest. When he does that little gesture combined with that particular tone of voice, Diana sees how easy the part of the playboy is. While it’s mostly an act for the papers, there’s a side of him that fits comfortably in the role, though he’d most likely deny it if she were ever to bring it up to him. “The fun part is: the only person who has access to this file is Waller herself. So it’s not like she’s tossing this stuff at an intern with a high clearance level. She’s not getting any of her lackeys to do it. Whatever she’s keeping secret, she wants it so secret that only she has access to it.”

“And you were able to hack it and put a bug on it without her knowledge?” Diana questions.

Bruce looks mildly offended. “Of course I did. I know my way around hacking.”

“I have no doubt you do, but don’t you think that if this file is so important only Waller has access to it, she’ll have the best of the best security surrounding it?”

“Are you implying that I don’t have any programs capable of that high of a level?”

Diana sighs, feeling a dull ache start behind her eyes, and she shakes her head while giving him a defeated look. “No. That’s not what I’m implying. I’m just saying that I believe Waller’s made it a little too easy for you to get this kind of information in such a short amount of time. Trust me, I don’t like whatever she’s got up her sleeve. I don’t at all. But I’m having a hard time believing she’d have something so top secret hidden by such a hackable code.”

“Everything’s hackable,” Bruce counters. He glances at Steve and jerks his head toward Diana. “She taught you how to hack yet?”

Steve frowns a little. “I created an email account earlier.”

“He’s not ready for that yet,” Diana says. “He’ll get there, but we’ve been more than a little preoccupied with this whole situation. First, Amanda Waller. Now, there’s this thing going on with Persephone and the Underworld. I don’t know which to attack first because it seems like they’re both just coming at us head on without any sign of which one is going to make its mark first.”

“Let me handle the Amanda Waller stuff,” Bruce says, his tone not quite an order but also not quite a friendly suggestion. “I can handle that and manage it just as well as you can. Now the Underworld…that’s more your territory than mine.”

Diana’s pride tells her that she needs to tell him she can handle this on her own, but her logic tells her to agree. Nodding, she gives him her consent. “Alright. You can handle that. Steve and I will handle tracking down the liaison and see where it goes from there.”

“I’ll let you know if I find anything out.”

“Same goes for us.”

“You can stay here tonight,” Bruce offers. “The Manor is always open to you, you know.”

Diana gives him a small smile and shakes her head. “Thank you so much for the offer, Bruce. Really. But if something happens, and Persephone comes tonight, then I want it to be at my place. If anything happens here, I’d just be dragging more people into it, and that’s the last thing I want. Really, I don’t want to involve _you_ in it, but it looks like I don’t have a choice right now. I’d just like to keep the number of casualties down.”

“Who said anything about casualties?” Bruce asks, not unkindly. “I’ll talk to you if I hear anything.”

“Same here.” Diana smiles at Bruce one last time and then turns to Steve, letting him gently take her arm as if he’s escorting her to a formal event. They’re both quiet as they exit the Manor and go out to the car that’s still parked in Bruce’s enormous circular driveway out front. She and Steve both climb into the car, and they begin their way home.

As they pass through the giant Wayne gates, Steve finally speaks. “Is there a reason why you want to do this alone?”

Diana steals a glance at him and sees the odd, confused look currently resting on his features. “I don’t want to risk people getting hurt. I have absolutely no doubt about what my teammates are capable of, but I do worry about something happening. Clark’s only been back from the dead for a little while. Barry’s only living family member is locked up in prison for life. Arthur has no real sense of home as he’s not accepted by full humans or by full Atlanteans. Vic…he’s lost so much already that losing him entirely is unthinkable for me. When it comes to them, I can’t bear to think that something happened to them because of me or the world I came from.”

Steve’s quiet for a couple moments, and in his silence, Diana notices he doesn’t look at her. After a few contemplative seconds, still facing the window, he speaks again. “I know it’s been a while for you, but do you remember Veld?”

“I don’t think I could forget Veld,” Diana says, serious as ever. She’s not sure which part of Veld Steve is talking about, but she hasn’t been able to forget a single thing about it. She remembers how it had felt to liberate the small village from the Germans. She remembers how it had felt to dance with him, to sleep in the same bed beside him. She remembers how it had killed a piece of her when she realized the gas had killed every civilian left behind in the village.

“Do you remember that night when everyone was celebrating? We’d all just finished taking turns quickly bathing in and cleaning ourselves up with lukewarm water, and I remember thinking it was the greatest bath of my life. I’ve always felt that, though. First bath after being out on the front?” He makes a scoffing little sound. “There’s nothing like getting the dirt and the sweat off of you. Sometimes there’s blood, and sometimes it’s not even your own blood, but that’s what feels even better when you clean it off.”

“Steve,” Diana says softly, looking over at him with a longer glance. “What are you saying?”

“But do you know what I mean? Didn’t it feel amazing to finally wash all that off you?”

“It did, yes.”

“That’s what I mean. You know, I don’t think I had any new wounds then. I should have since I’d been knocked around enough during the crossing to where I should have had bruises and cuts, but I didn’t. That Themysciran magic was working even then.”

“At least what we _think_ is the cause of your healing factor.”

“Well, regardless, I wasn’t cut up, so the blood I scrubbed off myself wasn’t even my own blood. But I finished washing up last, and I didn’t even care that the water wasn’t as clean as it was when you’d taken the first bath. It just felt so nice to be clean again, and you and I were absolutely squeaky clean when we were out in the middle of the village watching the villagers.”

“There was all that music and dancing, and you told me I wasn’t going to the ball Ludendorff was holding the next night, even though I actively ignored you later on.”

“Do you remember the moments before we started dancing, though? We talked. I told you that you’d done this. You’d brought all this happiness to these people again. It was all because of _you_. If you hadn’t ignored me in the trenches and crossed No Man’s Land, then all those happy singing people would have been enslaved by the Germans or dead, and I just…I was so proud of you. I was—I could barely stand to breathe I was so proud of you. And I said to you, I told you that you did that. Do you remember what you said back to me?”

“I said we’d done it. The team.”

“Yeah. That. You didn’t take the credit. You made sure I knew that you thought of it as a team effort, and it’s because you really did believe so.”

“What does this have to do with anything, Steve?” Diana asks. Her breathing is a little on edge, and she doesn’t know why she’s feeling defensive. Maybe it’s the fact that Steve thinks she’s legitimately an angel who can do no wrong ever. Maybe it’s the fact she doesn’t feel that way. Maybe she’s still so consumed by her own guilt that she can’t see beyond it to see herself the way Steve does.

“You were so eager for it to be a team effort back then. What’s going on now? Why do you want to do this by yourself now?” he asks. He doesn’t sound argumentative exactly, but from the tone of his voice, he clearly wants an answer.

Diana shifts in the driver’s seat, uncomfortable, and she keeps her eyes glued to the road as she replies. “Back then, Ares was someone from my world, and because of him, people died. You died. Now another god from my world is causing problems, and I cannot stand to have another death of someone I care about on my conscience.”

“Diana, it wasn’t—“

“Please don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault,” she quickly interrupts. “No matter what you say, I’m never going to believe that there was nothing I could have done to save you. I’m always going to feel guilty over it. But I can do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. With the others, we’ve fought many things before together. We all work well, but this is something I need to do on my own as best as I can. If I can’t protect them from what Persephone has in store, then how can I protect anyone else? The entirety of this country? The world? What about you? How can I protect you?”

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but my protection doesn’t lie solely on your shoulders. I’m not a breakable vase, Diana,” Steve argues. “I can only imagine the depth of the loss you felt back when I died, but I’m here now. Ok? I didn’t even die. I just…I was in a coma. You can feel guilty all you want, but that doesn’t change anything about the reality of my being here with you right now this very second. You can’t wrap me up and lock me in a cabinet to make sure I don’t break.”

Suddenly, Diana whips off the road and pulls onto the shoulder. She doesn’t even pause as she sets the car into Park and then flings the door open. For a moment, Steve watches her in complete silence as she stalks off toward the rear of the car. He can see it in her body that there’s an unbelievable amount of tension and stress locking her muscles up. Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever seen her physically tense. He’s seen her poised, ready for battle, preparing to strike, but he’s never seen her hold herself so tightly clenched that she looks as if she’s struggling to keep a bottle from popping open.

He opens the door and follows behind her, though he’s careful not to get too close. He’s seen Diana’s temper flare up several times before, and he doesn’t want to encroach her personal space. She’s furious right now. Beyond furious. He can practically smell her anger it’s so thick and heavy as it oozes out of her like fiery sludge.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Diana asks then before he can speak. “Do you think I don’t know I’m being overprotective of you? Do you think I have no clue where all of my fear and guilt comes from? Because I know, Steve. I know far more about it than you think I do.”

“Diana…I didn’t mean…”

“Your death—or what I _thought_ was your death—shaped so many parts of my life to come, and you don’t get to show up out of nowhere one day without having seen everything I lived through, and you don’t get to accuse me of being wrong for wanting to keep you alive.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of that.”

“No?” Her head whips to the side to look at him, her dark brown eyes blazing. “Then what were you saying? Hmm? Tell me since I don’t understand what you so clearly meant to convey.”

“I…” Steve takes a breath and holds his hands out to the side like he doesn’t know what he can offer her. “I’m sorry, ok? I’m sorry you thought I was dead. I’m sorry it went on for so long. I’m sorry it affected you as deeply as it did.”

“Don’t patronize me, Steve. You already did that once, and look where it got us,” she snaps before she can take it back.

They’re silent then, Steve staring at Diana and Diana refusing to back down. Steve blinks once, twice, and then he runs a hand through his hair. “Wow. Alright then. That’s what you think?”

“Yes.”

“I just…Diana, I hate seeing you beat yourself up over this. I don’t…goddammit.” He heaves another sigh and puts his hands on his hips, the posture of a man who’s been defeated and knows it. “I hate knowing I’m the one who hurt you so much. I hate knowing that all these decisions you’ve made in your life to separate yourself from people who care about you most likely stem from me. I hate it. I hate it so fucking much because I never _ever_ wanted that path for you. I don’t know what I thought we could have together, but that’s the thing—I thought that there would be—that there _could_ be a future for us to even think about being something in, but I knew then as I know now that I never wanted to be the cause of any pain for you. So yeah, it kills me to see how guilty you feel. It kills me to see that you think you have to keep me padded up and locked away because I hurt you so bad the first time when I went away that the thought of it happening a second time scares you that much. I hate it, Diana.”

Diana’s eyes have dropped again by the time he’s done speaking. She looks down at the ground, but she’s still listening. He can tell that much in the way she keeps her head tilted and her body angled. She’s listening to him, and that’s all he can ask for right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says with an anguished sigh. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted this to happen. God, I…I never thought I could hurt someone like this. But I did, and seeing how afraid you are of hurting that way again makes me angry with myself for having ever done that to you in the first place. And, I won’t lie, I love you, but I can’t stand being treated like I’m three seconds away from falling into pieces. If I have to tell you every hour for every day the rest of our lives that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, I’ll do that. I mean it. If that’s what I need to do to help you realize I’m here, then I’ll do it.”

“No,” Diana murmurs after a few moments. She clears her throat and looks fully at the ground now. “I don’t…you…I don’t need you to do that. I don’t _want_ you to do that.”

“Then what do you want? What can I do to help you?” Steve implores, and suddenly, he feels like he’s back on that tower in Veld begging her to come with him to stop the War. It’s with an acute ache he remembers the look of betrayal and pain in her eyes when she’d shaken her head no and taken a step back from him. “Please. Tell me, Diana. Please.”

Before Diana can answer, the reader she’s borrowing from Bruce to track the energy levels of those made when contact between realms occurs goes off. She yanks it out of the pocket of her expensive pants, and she looks down at it.

ENERGY SURGE DETECTED

“Is that saying there’s something taking place?” Steve asks.

Diana swallows hard, and she looks up at him. “We need to go.”

* * *

Amanda Waller reads over the rest of the ritual. She needs to make sure it’s perfect. If it’s perfect, then it’ll work, and if it works, then she’ll have what she wants. What she _needs_. Needs and wants are two very different things—this she knows all too well—but sometimes they can both be the same thing.

Finding the Enchantress had changed everything for her. Even though she’d kill the bitch in a heartbeat and send her back to Hell for a second time, Waller can’t help feeling grateful for all the doors the Enchantress had opened for her. In just a short amount of time, Waller had learned all about the different worlds and how they collided together. She’d learned how to manipulate it all.

But most importantly, Waller had learned of the Book of Necromancy. The Enchantress had whispered its contents into her ear one night at Waller’s request, and Waller knew right then and there that she needed it. At the time, she didn’t know what she’d do with the Book, but she knew she needed to have it, and so she’d set up the search. Of course, the witch had proven to be of considerable help. Waller had still had her heart then, and whatever Waller asked, the witch had to do or risk losing her chances altogether of ever being reunited with it. Waller knew it, and she had no qualms about using that resource to the fullest.

So by the time Waller had tracked down everything she needed that would lead her to the Book of Necromancy, she’d sent the witch to get it. Enchantress had brought it back to her as expected, but then the shitshow that was the Suicide Squad’s first mission happened, and Enchantress ruined everything by getting herself killed. On a personal level, Waller felt no remorse. On a professional level, however, she felt the witch’s death on a painfully deep level.

And since she no longer had the witch to run errands for her and go to these unheard of places while remaining undetected, Waller had set about to collecting the supplies she needed on her own. She didn’t trust anyone with her secret. No one at ARGUS knew what she was up to, and she liked it that way because she _couldn’t_ trust anyone with the truth. If someone were to catch wind of her plan, and they put a stop to it, Waller would have lost, and she’s never liked being the one to lose.

Interestingly enough, Persephone had been the one to make contact first. Waller had been in a deep sleep when the immortal goddess had broken through the barriers between the realms to communicate with her. Her voice that had once breathed life now rattled with that familiar crackle of death as she’d whispered in Waller’s ear what they had to do. Waller had the Book. She had the supplies. She’d listened to the Enchantress’s call, and now all she needed to do was put those things together.

“We can do it,” Persephone whispered. For the goddess of rebirth, she sounded as cold as death. When the first contact had taken place, she’d been at her weakest then. Amanda Waller remembered that very well. Persephone, a goddess, had been weak. “You can do it, and you can save the world. A whole army at your command.”

“And what’s in it for you?” Amanda asked. She’d been so untrusting, so on guard.

“Freedom.”

Waller gazes into the chalice in front of her and finishes adding the crushed bones the Book calls for.

“Freedom,” she murmurs as she strikes a match.  The orange flame jerks out a macabre jig, its brightness against the dark night around her impossible to ignore. “That’s what you want, Persephone. I want justice.”

When Amanda Waller lights the fire, the ritual begins.


	20. Secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Rex501st, morethanpixels, Felix787, TobiKeeper, Teksasha, scorpiogirl93, and nsthorlover for commenting!
> 
> Wow, ok, it's been forever since I updated, and I swear I have an acceptable reason! A couple months ago, my MacBook died on me, and by the time I had the funds to go get it repaired, I had to get the hard drive completely replaced. So pretty much everything I'd written, downloaded, saved, etc. for four years was wiped out, and that includes all 19 chapters of this fic. Suffice it to say, I was really down about it and lost a lot of motivation to write, but thankfully, those 19 chapters are here so it's not like I *completely* lost them per se. Anyway, I decided to stop moping, and I whipped out this chapter for anyone who's hopefully still around and hasn't lost faith in me yet.
> 
> I wish I could say this chapter is less plot-driven and more character-driven since I prefer writing Steve and Diana over struggling to come up with a semi-believable plot, but there's more plot going on here because I'd like to start wrapping on the main plot as much as I can since the emotional stuff between Steve and Diana still needs to be tackled. And on that note, if you've stuck with me through this boring Author's Note, and hell, if you've actually stuck around and waited for an update instead of giving up on me, thank you SO much. It's been a rough couple of months, but I'm hoping for some good things now that I'm back writing.
> 
> Thank you (again) and enjoy :)

For a few moments, neither of them speaks.  Diana's foot presses the acceleration pedal down to the mat, making the car go uncomfortably and dangerously fast.  The tension from moments ago is still thick between them, and he hates how they're leaving these things said and unsaid dangling between them, but for now, they have to.  His whole body aches to spill everything in his head and his heart, everything he's wanted to say since he woke up on the beach and saw her smiling down at him.  Hell, he wants to tell her everything he'd started to that night in Veld that first night they were together in a way so intimate the word "intimate" has never meant the same thing to him.  If he's quiet any longer, he's going to crack and pour out everything to her, but he can't do it.  Not now.  Not when they need to be focused on the mission at hand, and if there's one thing Steve knows he's great at, it's completing a mission.

"Where are we going?" he makes himself asks as Diana gets the car to careen down the road even faster.  Modern cars are still a novelty to him, and he feels slightly sick at the thought of how fast they're going, how he isn't the one behind the wheel controlling everything.  It's not that he doesn't trust Diana--God knows he trusts her more than he trusts anyone else--it's just that with everything falling out beneath his feet, he'd like to feel some semblance of control over one aspect of his life.

"Gotham Cemetery," Diana replies.  If she's still upset about their argument, she shows no sign of it, and Steve isn't sure whether or not that's a good thing.  He knows, however, that now isn't the time to bring it back up.  When they finish taking care of whatever it is that's lit up Bruce's energy reader like a department store at Christmastime, they'll have to talk about it then.  For now, though, he forces himself to focus on the task at hand.

"How far away is that?"

"Five minutes." Diana's foot presses down harder, and Steve's stomach practically lurches up into his esophagus.  The planes he flew back during the War in 1918 are nothing compared to the cars of this day and age, he thinks.  And unfortunately, he has the feeling that the strange sensation of being lost in time won't be one that goes away anytime soon.

The reader goes off again, and Diana glances at it, her expression becoming increasingly worried with each passing second. "The reading's getting stronger the closer we get."

"And that's a good thing," Steve says, and he looks over at her to read her face in response.

"Good...is a relative term," she replies hesitantly and then cuts a sharp right turn that reminds Steve of all the jerky, bumpy flights he'd navigated back when he'd been in training.  Planes had been so new then, and he'd been so drunk with the thought of flying that he would've said yes to the world's bumpiest flight in a heartbeat.  He wanted to fly and be free, yet not so free that he was out of control, and when he was in a plane, he got to have that feeling he'd sought for so long but hadn't been able to name.  As he remembers what it felt like to fly for the first time, he realizes just how vastly different it is from being in this car Diana's using like a weapon.

"What are you expecting to find?" he asks.  He isn't sure he wants to know, but he needs to.  If he's going to back Diana up, he needs to know what they might be going up against.

"I don't know," Diana admits.  "If we're lucky, we'll find Persephone's liaison or better yet, Persephone herself." Her mouth twists to the side, and she looks like she's going to say something else, but then she doesn't.  Before Steve can ask what she wanted to say, she suddenly slows the car and switches the lights off.  The change jars Steve so much that he silently sends up a prayer to whatever gods might be listening that he doesn't lose his cool and puke right there in the car, and he takes several deep, slow breaths.  Diana's eyes scan over the darkness in front of them, her acute eyes able to see a bit more clearly than Steve's. "We need to get out on foot."

Without saying anything, Steve steps out of the car with her, and he squints, struggling to make out details in the night surrounding them.  A tall iron gate looms in front of them, a menacing accent in contrast to the stone walls that enclose the permanent homes of the dead lying inside.  Death has never bothered Steve; at least, not in the way it does most people.  For someone who's watched old men, young women, and children be killed in the most brutal ways imaginable, death doesn't frighten him.  Then again, he reasons, he's died and come back to life already.  What more does he have to fear?

"Steve," Diana says quietly.

He looks over at her again. "Yeah?"

She holds her shield out to him, and that's when he notices her sword grasped in her hand, her lasso dangling from her hip.  She's still dressed in the clothes she'd put on for dinner at Wayne Manor with the League, but otherwise, she looks exactly like the Amazon warrior she is.  He pauses for a second, just looking at her.  He's only ever seen her in civilian clothes or her armor, never a combination of both, and he's struck by the realization that this is who Diana is now.  She's not the same Amazon he'd known in 1918.  Logically, he's known that ever since he woke up, but it hasn't really sunk in for him until just now.  No matter what his memory tells him, how his mind chooses to remember her, the image of who she is now doesn't quite line up.  She's the past and the present combined, but for him, she's also the future.

"Take this," she says and lets the shield pass into his hands. "You don't have anything with which to protect yourself."

Steve starts to protest, but he thinks back to the argument they'd had not even 15 minutes ago.  Swallowing, he nods and slips his arm through the leather bands where her arm wound normally go. "Thanks."

"Of course."

Steve starts walking, and the sudden motion throws Diana. "Steve?"

"We need to go this way."

"How do you know that?"

"I...I don't know." He glances at her, takes in the sight of her perturbed expression even despite the dark. "I just know we need to walk this way."

_Listen to me, Steve Trevor.  You've heard my call.  Don't shut me out now._

A dull, throbbing ache starts in the back of Steve's skull, and he stumbles a little, but he catches himself before he falls.

"Steve.  Steve, are you ok?"

_Listen to me.  Listen._

"We need...we need to go here." Steve has to force the words out as the pain builds.  His stride again falters, but again, he picks himself back up and keeps walking.

"What's happening?"

"I don't know, but I can hear her." His eyes dart up to the sky. "I can feel her like she's here.  There's just this...this feeling that tells me where she is."

"Keep your shield up."

_It's almost done, Steve Trevor.  We've come so far, you and I.  We mustn't let it go to waste now, do you understand me?_

"Diana..."

When Diana looks at Steve, his face is sickly pale, and sweat pours off of him in a way that isn't natural at all.  Her heart lurches, but she forces herself to stay calm.  Whatever is happening to him is happening because of something Persephone's doing, and when she gets to Persephone, she'll be able to stop it all.  She doesn't say any of this out loud, but she thinks it.  Her mind won't stop screaming it over and over.  When she gets to Persephone, she'll make sure the goddess of rebirth will never be able to do this ever again.  Not to her, not to Steve, not to anyone.  Diana hadn't been able to save Steve before, but she promises him she'll do everything she can now.

Steve stops, every muscle in his body locking up, and Diana stops beside him. "Steve, talk to me.  What's going on?  What do you hear?"

He looks at her.  He blinks.  His shirt is completely soaked through with sweat. "I'm sorry."

"What? Wh--" Diana doesn't get to finish her question because his hands hit her shoulders with a force she hasn't felt since taking one of Ares's blows, and she's falling.

* * *

The first thing she feels is cold.

A cold dampness seeps into her skin and past her arteries and veins until it gets to her bones.  In all the years Diana has been alive, she's never felt cold like this.  There is only darkness and this heartless iciness she can't fight off.  No.  Not heartless.  It's empty.  The frigid air around her is empty, and the thought of that is far more frightening.  Slowly, she blinks and forces her eyes open.  She can't see anything.  She blinks again and again and again, desperate to catch some kind of shape around her, but the only thing that changes is the fiery burn the cold leaves against her eyes.  Shivering violently, she tries to make herself sit up.  If she can sit, then she can stand.  If she can stand, then she can walk.  If she can walk, then she can find whoever's doing this to her, though she certainly has a couple suspicions.

"Steve?" she says aloud.  Her voice is weak and hoarse, and she can't fight the cough that her raw throat produces. "Steve?  Are you here?"

"He's not here," a voice replies.  Diana jerks and tries to locate a body to whom the voice belongs, but every time she opens her eyes, she's struck by that searing stab of cold that burns her eyes to the point where it's impossible to keep them open.  She puts the back of her hand against her closed, watering eyes, and she keeps her breaths steady.

"Where is he?" she asks levelly.

"The ritual is going according to plan.  My wife is the one taking care of him on that end while I take care of you here on this end."

"Hades?" she chokes, trying to swallow back the coughs that threaten to overtake her lungs.

"I've never doubted your intelligence, Diana of Themyscira.  Neither has my wife."

Diana turns her head trying to locate the source of Hades's voice with her hearing. If she can't see him, she's got to listen to him."What are you doing?"

"The prophecy, Diana."

"The prophecy," she repeats in a whisper. "The prophecy...Steve..."

"Yes. Steven Rockwell Trevor. Persephone's leading man in her passion play.  Who else did you think the hero of the prophecy was?"

"No," she rasps. "You don't mean that."

"I do," Hades says in a whisper that comes from behind her left ear, making her lash out into the black air only to touch nothing. "His heart is pure, just as it was back during the Great War when he sacrificed himself for you and for the whole world.  Not just anyone could or  _would_ do something so selfless.  But he did.  He was the hero  _and_ the blood price, and since one hundred years have gone by as the prophecy commanded, it's time to set the rest into motion."

 

_The River Styx with all its bones_

_Will send its travellers wand'ring home_

_Rise again, the Fates command_

_For only she can save the land._

 

_Fear not death, the dead will walk the Earth_

_Sacrifices turned into birth_

_A tool of purpose to the goddess defy_

_Someone must win, someone must die._

 

"The dead will walk the Earth," Diana says quietly. "What does that mean?"

"It means exactly what you think it means, Princess.  That's what this entire prophecy has been about because how can you kill what's already dead?"

"I don't...understand. I don't understand."

"I think you do."

"But your wife...my aunt is the goddess of rebirth.  How could you have corrupted her so completely?" Diana's voice cracks, and she wheezes out several more coughs as she pictures her lungs freezing inside her ribcage.

"I didn't.  This prophecy is hers--it's what she was always meant to do.  The dead are rising again, Diana.  They're being reborn, and it's all because of my wife Persephone.  Anything can be brought back to life, but with this prophecy, she can ensure peace throughout the world forever because _you cannot kill that which is dead already_." Hades's voice comes right in front of Diana's face, and when she lashes out again, she makes contact with nothing.

"This isn't the way to do it.  What about all those souls resting in eternal peace in Elysium?  And the souls in Tartarus?  Do they all just get to rise again because Persephone says they will?  Because this prophecy decrees it?" she demands.

"Oh, no.  No, not at all, my niece.  The souls get to stay exactly where they are because I don't have the right to move them.  I have the capability, yes, but the reason...it isn't there, and I won't do it without reason when my wife and I can get what we need without such a traumatic move for them.  The bodies are all that we need.  The physical shells that hold humans like your Steve Trevor together."

Diana's throat tightens then, and her heartbeat instantly picks up. "Steve...are you saying that his soul...he doesn't have his soul?"

"No," Hades quietly replies. "He has his soul.  Giving him back his soul was part was essential to the success of the prophecy.  When he woke up in 2018, he needed to know you, remember you, and love you.  If he didn't, none of these events would've been able to happen because you wouldn't have had anything to lose."

For the first time since she's regained consciousness, Diana feels heat start to pulse deep inside her chest. "And you needed to give me something in order to take it back.  You needed to use my heart and my emotions like they were things for you to play with, and it didn't matter the tiniest bit because all that mattered was getting what you want, right?"

"She can bring peace back to the world."

"She can't," Diana says firmly, struggling to bring herself onto her knees. "She can't take the dead from their graves and use them to enforce peace around the world.  Peace doesn't work that way."

"And what do you know of peace? You weren't able to end the War that took Steve Trevor's life, so how do you know what brings peace?"

She rolls onto her knees and presses her palms flat against the icy floor to steady herself. "I don't know.  But I know that this isn't the way.  If it were, it wouldn't have been a hidden ritual kept so secret that not even the daughter of the Amazon Queen knew about it.  That's not what peace is about, Hades.  I might not have been able to stop the War in 1918, but I still managed to save people."

"Did you?  Or were you just in the right place at the right time after all the others had been killed first?"

"I did," she insists and starts to rise to her feet.  Anger throbs from within her, but she won't let herself lose control.  She can't lose control until she figures out how to get back to Steve, how to save him the way she failed to a century ago. "I saved people because one man loved me and believed in me enough to give his life in exchange for peace, but you've taken what he did, and you've exploited it.  You're using him as a pawn to justify your twisted idea of what you believe peace to be.  And if peace is manipulating people's lives so the dead can rise and fight your battles for you, then that's not the peace I've fought for, nor is it the peace Steve died to preserve." She steadies her balance as she straightens. "You are a disgrace, Uncle.  You don't understand anything at all about love or peace because if you did you wouldn't have kidnapped your wife and kept her here as a prisoner for thousands of years."

"Watch your tongue," Hades snaps.  He's close enough that Diana can feel his breath against her ear, and before he can do or say anything else, she turns and raises her wrists, smashing them together.  Light, heat, and the deafening boom that come from her signature motion erupt throughout the air, and for the first time, Diana gets a glimpse at who her uncle, the god of the Underworld, really is.

* * *

 The pit in the cemetery swallows Diana and then closes as fast as it had opened, and Steve falls to his knees.

"No," he moans. "No...no, get out of my head.  No."

"Rise, my sweet hero."

The voice he remembers as honey flows through the atoms and molecules surrounding him, and he swears he can hear every vibration of her beautiful liquid voice.  Persephone isn't in his head anymore, and so when she puts her hand underneath his chin and gently lifts his face up to look at her, he doesn't fight her.  He can hardly see through the sweat that courses down his skin and into his eyes, but his hands are too heavy to lift up and wipe the salty perspiration away.

"Diana," he whispers.

"My husband is keeping her safe while we talk.  My friend has gone through a lot of trouble to bring me up here so we can speak, and it'd be inconsiderate of me to not use this opportunity when she's shed blood, sweat, and tears over the rituals to make this meeting possible," Persephone says beautifully.  She smiles at him, and Steve instantly feels like the world has gotten a little bit sweeter, even if he feels far too weak to stand. "I won't hurt you, and this is a promise.  Amanda here is a witness to testify to that."

Steve's eyes dart to the side, and he sees Amanda Waller wrapping a bandage around her hand. "Waller."

"Captain Trevor," Waller greets, giving him a curt nod.

"You did this?" he asks.  He hates how weak he sounds, how out of control and lifeless.

"We did," Persephone gently corrects. "I didn't have the power to do all of this myself, but Amanda Waller was kind enough to help me do what needed to be done so I can be here.  You, too, have done what you needed to."

"What  _you_ needed me to." Steve narrows his eyes and sways a little to keep his balance. "You told me to push Diana.  You told me...you said..."

"She isn't hurt, Steve Trevor.  I promised you, remember?  And a goddess never goes back on her promise." She smooths some hair out of his face and smiles at him in a way that's so reminiscent of Diana it almost hurts. "I needed to speak with you without my husband near, and the only way I could do that was to keep him distracted with Diana.  You have my word that he won't hurt her, either."

"Why...why are you doing this?" Steve stares at her.  Hades is the one who's related to Diana through blood, and yet Persephone looks far more like Diana than Hades does.  His vision clouds, and it takes all of his concentration to get it to part so he can look at the goddess clearly. "Where's Diana?"

"She's in the Underworld," Persephone patiently replies. "Steve, please listen to me. I need you to understand what I'm saying to you and what I need you to do."

"Go to Hell," Steve spits suddenly and tries to pull away from her, though he's no match for her goddess-like strength when he's weakened this way.  He doesn't know why he thinks of Diana and the odd reaction she'd had to Persephone when they'd met her in the Underworld for the first time, but now he understands. God, he understands.

Persephone's smile turns a little sadder, and she strokes his cheek with the back of her hand. "I've already been there and lived it for centuries.  But that's where you come in because this is why I need you."

"Me?" Steve's eyes blaze, and he tries yet again to pull away from her tender touch. "No.  I'm not doing anything for you until you bring Diana back."

"And I can't do that until I get the help I need from you.  Will you listen to me first?"

The way she looks at him is so sad, so imploring, and despite the anger he feels gurgling inside him, he also catches onto the irrational sense of wanting to do as she asks.  He wants to tell her no, he wants to tell her to go fuck off in Tartarus, but the more he fights, the sicker he feels, and the greater the pain gets.  So he doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no.  He simply looks at her. "What do you want?"

She kneels down in front of him so she's eye level with him, and she leans forward to put her mouth by his ear.

"I want freedom," she whispers to him, her voice still as smooth and as warm as honey. "I want my husband dead."

 

 


	21. Risen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, MarcusRowland, nymphrea, outofnothing, nsthorlover, Felix787, ButNotTheHippo, and Snowecat for commenting!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's still stuck around during my long absences! I'm so happy to see that people haven't given up on this fic :) Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I do want to drop my usual disclaimer that I'm taking a LOT of creative license with Greek mythology here. I'm always afraid I'm going to have angry comments accusing me of not knowing anything about Greek mythology, so again...I'm taking a bunch of artistic liberty here to make everything fall into place!
> 
> If you've still stuck around since my last absence, thank you, and I'm so grateful to know that there at least a couple of you out there who are still hanging in there! I'd like to think I'm within the last 5 chapters of this fic here, but that could always change, so I don't want to promise anything. Anyway, thank you (again), and as always, I love hearing feedback from y'all. Enjoy! :)

When Diana was a child, she revered the gods of whom her mother told her stories.  She learned which gods and goddesses were ones to be trusted and those who should not be.  She’d grown up loving the gods, praying to them, and even thanking them for the blessings in her life, but as Diana looks at Hades and sees his true face, the face only another god can look upon, she no longer feels reverence toward the beings she’d been taught to love and to worship.  When Diana looks into her uncle’s eyes, she sees everything she’s ever fought against. Pain, torture, cruelty, and abandonment. She sees everything that Ares had once tried to force her to see in humanity, and just as she had 100 years ago, she thinks about Steve. She thinks about his goodness, his steadiness, his consistency.  Whether he’s leading his men into battle or following her orders, he comes through. Unlike Ares, Steve had been willing to die if it meant that innocent lives would be saved.

“You should be thanking me,” she says, lowering her arms from their crossed position.  Hades has been blown backwards from the force of her smashing her gauntlets together, but he’s still on his feet.

“Why should I thank you?” he demands. “What have you done to make you think you deserve my gratitude?”

“For not killing you right here and now.”

Hades laughs and shakes his head, eyes glued to her. “You’re certainly brave, Diana of Themyscira.  You’re braver than you know.”

“I know exactly how brave I am.” She draws herself up to her fullest height that’ll also allow her to be on the defensive. “I’ve seen more wars than you could ever dream of.”

“I don’t need to see a hundred different wars to see their effects on mankind,” Hades shoots back. “You think I don’t see them?  All the dead who come down here? If you’ve never seen millions of mangled souls all together in one space, then you have no right to speak of the wars you’ve seen and how brave you think you are.  You might be brave, yes. Stupid and arrogant, no.”

“You misunderstand me.”

“Do I?”

“You see all of these souls when they’re dead, but how often have you seen them when they were alive?  When was the last time you saw a living mortal soul?” she asks, demanding an answer.

Hades’s eyes grow a little darker. “Your Captain, the one to fulfill my wife’s prophecy.”

“He’s not mortal,” Diana shoots back. “Not anymore.  The waters of Themyscira made sure of that.”

“As did the Fates, you know.” Hades’s mouth twists into a smile now.  Not cruel, not taunting, but the way someone smiles whenever they know something that someone else does not. “It was no accident that your Captain ended up on your island, nor was it any accident that you made the decision to leave.  All of it was designed to lead up to the moment of Trevor’s sacrifice in the plane, and it’s all because of the Fates and their knowledge of the prophecy to come.”

“Enough!” Diana snaps.  Her grip on her sword tightens as she stares at him. “I don’t want to fight you, but I can’t let whatever all of this is happen.”

Now Hades’s smile turns into one genuinely amused. “But Diana...it already has.”

* * *

Steve’s vision clears, and he no longer feels as weak and sick as he had only moments before.  Having jerked back from Persephone, he stares at her with wide eyes full of confusion and disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Listen to me.” She reaches out and puts her hands on his face, holding him still so she can look him in the eye. “I need you to listen to me.  Diana will keep him distracted for only so long, and we don’t have much time. Do you understand?”

Still apprehensive and suspicious of the goddess before him, Steve nods. “I do.”

“The prophecy you’re meant to fulfill cannot be undone.  Your heart is what got you here, and I need your heart to be what pulls me from my husband’s control.” She stops and looks up as if she’s heard something.

“What is it?” Steve asks.

“No,” she whispers.

“What is it?” Steve repeats.  She doesn’t answer, and right when he’s about to shout at her, he hears a low rumble that comes from deep in the Earth.  He looks down and then back up at her. “What the hell is happening?”

Persephone’s face is sickly white, and she turns to look at him with even whiter eyes. “My husband’s army.”

Before Steve can say anything in response, force her to tell him the truth, demand answers to what’s going on and why he and Diana have been brought into this prophecy, a spot of Earth next to him explodes open.  He stares in disbelief, watching as a sinister mist rises up from the hole. “No fucking way.”

Behind him, another hole explodes open, and he brings his shield up in front of him.  He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows he needs to protect himself. If he can’t take the offensive, he has to take the defensive until he has a better idea of why the Earth is blowing up in chunks around him.  His eyes dart over to Persephone, who’s not watching the explosions as they happen one after the other. By now, Steve has lost count of how many holes leak mist into the black Gotham night air above him. He opens his mouth to speak, but he’s cut off by a long, single shriek that chills him to his bones.

Then a hand rises up from the gaping hole closest to him.

* * *

A piercing scream rips through the air of the Underworld and makes Diana sink down to her knees, crying out under the weight of it.  In her head, she sees visions of death and blood. She sees men drowning, women’s throats being sliced open, innocent people begging for mercy only to be gunned down without a second of remorse on their murderers’ faces.  In just one unearthly scream, she feels every single death that every mortal has experienced during the time since humankind was created. Airplanes explode, blood trickles from severed limbs to stain the soil, and gunshots shatter skulls.  No matter how she tries to cover her ears and stop the sound of the scream, she can’t break the images and make them stop.

“That’s death, Diana!” Hades shouts over the furious din. “Everything you’re hearing and seeing is what I have heard and seen for an eternity, what I’ll continue to see.  When you leave here, you’ll never see these scenes again, but I’ll have them with me forever. And you want to tell me you know what death is like? You want to tell me you’ve seen war?  Diana...my dear niece...you haven’t seen anything yet.”

The scream stops, and Diana’s wail of pain is the only sound left slicing through the empty space surrounding her.  She doesn’t remember when she’d started screaming, nor had she even been aware she’d been screaming in the first place, but her throat is raw, and she tastes the metallic tinge of scarlet red blood against her tongue.  Forcing herself to open her eyes, she realizes she’s lying on the ground, cheek pressed into the black soil beneath her. Pain radiates throughout her entire body, and she wants nothing more than to close her eyes and lose herself in unconsciousness if it means the pain will stop.

“I know,” Hades says quietly as Diana closes her eyes again.  She doesn’t know where he is, but she can feel him approaching her. “Even for a demi-goddess, it’s a lot to handle.  No human should ever be made to feel that kind of pain, and now that you’ve experienced it yourself, I think I’m safe to say you agree with me.”

She struggles to turn onto her back, but she can’t.  She can only pant and gasp for breath, half-conscious and half-delirious with all the pain and suffering Hades had forced inside her head.  On every inch of her skin, she feels sweat crawl out of her pores and trickle its way across her skin. She doesn’t know which way is up, nor does she know which way is down.  All she knows is that she can hardly move, can hardly think, and Hades is too close to her.

“The prophecy has already started.” His frigid whisper is in her ear, and it turns her entire body cold. “The dead have begun to rise.”

Horror fills Diana from the bottom of her stomach all the way up to the highest point of her skull, and she forces herself to open her eyes.  What she sees is like nothing she’s ever witnessed before except in old, campy horror movies. Beings with skin so thin and white it’s translucent are rising up above her head.  She doesn’t know where they came from, nor can she identify their point of origin, but she sees them rising higher and higher. Her vision blurs, the desire to close her eyes and surrender to blackness intensifying, but she grits her teeth to fight through the pain, and she looks.

* * *

Steve brings Diana’s shield up higher in front of him, and he takes a good leap backwards, swearing loudly as he sees the hand rise up.  All around him, people start to emerge from the ground. Their faces are indistinguishable, and if he looks too hard, he feels like he loses all details to any kind of features that normally would be present, but he can see enough to tell that they’re people.  Persephone appears by his side, and she presses something into his hand. He goes to ask her what it is, she whispers something in his ear, and then she’s gone.

“Waller!” Steve shouts, realizing it’s just the two of them now in the cemetery against these beings resurrecting themselves from the ground.  Some come up through established graves, and others blast holes through the Earth and come up, first appearing as mist and then solidifying into something more human-like and grotesque.  When Steve chances a look over in Waller’s direction, he sees a Glock in her hand.

“What the hell have you done?” He can’t keep the fury out of his voice when her eyes meet his. “What is this?”

“It’s Hades’s army!” she calls back to him. “They’re rising.  It’s part of the prophecy. Persephone told me--”

“Fuck that!” Steve interrupts.  The ground beneath him starts to break apart, and he deftly leaps to the side and runs in Waller’s direction right as the spot he’d been standing on explodes for another thing from the Underworld to slither out.  Waller sees him running towards her, and she quickly raises her Glock at him. She pulls the trigger, and Steve raises his shield to deflect it, sending it pinging off into another part of the cemetery. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“It’s already started!” Waller warns. “You can’t stop it, Captain Trevor.  The dead are rising the way the prophecy said they would. Persephone wasn’t lying to you--she wasn’t lying to _us_.  Right from the beginning, this was always the plan, and you’ve played your part beautifully.  You and Diana both.”

“What?” Steve swings the shield and makes solid contact with one of the beings running at him.  Not all of them seem interested in attacking him, but some have taken notice, and they’re closing in.  Instantly, he feels those familiar soldier instincts inside him, those same instincts he was trained to trust above all others, snap into place.

“I made a deal with Persephone.  Serve as her liaison between this world and the Underworld, help her come back above ground, and I’d have the indestructible army I need to protect the entire globe.  Not just America. Not just our allies, but everyone. With the army of the dead, you can’t lose, Captain. You of all people know that you can’t kill what’s already dead!” Waller shouts as he slams his shield into another attacking figure.

Suddenly, something clicks in Steve’s head.  If these things charging at him really are the risen dead, then they can’t die.  If they can’t die, and that’s the whole reason why Amanda Waller wanted them in exchange for Persephone’s freedom, then that means he can’t win against them.  They can’t die, but he can.

* * *

“You can’t do this,” Diana whispers.  Hades doesn’t hear her; her voice is too weak, and the rush of the dead taking back the world of the living has distracted him.  In an almost pathetic attempt, she puts her hands against the inky soil she’s collapsed upon and pushes so she can turn herself over onto her back.  Every muscle and bone in her body screams with the pain of the deaths she’d just been forced to internalize. Coughing, she turns her gaze upon Hades. “You can’t do this.”

He glances at her as if remembering she’s still there. “I’m already doing it.  All over the world, the dead are assembling. The only way to save the human race is to show them what they don’t want to become, and I think they’ll want to fall in line when they see the same things I’ve shown you tonight.”

“No.” Diana spits up blood, something that should worry her, but she ignores it as she struggles to get back onto her feet.  Silently, she prays to whatever gods are still left, whatever gods are listening, and she asks them for strength. She prays to Zeus, her father.  She prays to Hestia. She prays to her mother, remembering how her mother had taught her to pray to the gods as a little girl. _Let me stand.  Please...give me the strength to stand._

“This is the Renaissance, Diana.  Neither you nor your Captain can stop what’s happening,” Hades says, more to himself than to her.  “What’s already begun can only be finished, and it’ll be finished by mankind’s surrender to the only force more powerful than life.”

_Death_ , Diana thinks.  She doesn’t need him to say it, just as he knows he doesn’t need to say it.  The only force more powerful than life is death. As she looks at him, her mind screaming and fighting back against her muscles, she tries to believe what he says.  She thinks of all the times she should’ve been killed but had lived to see another day. She thinks of all the times the members of the League have suffered and been dropped at death’s door, only to find their way back.  Even though she’d been opposed to the idea of bringing Clark back to life, she remembers how he came back, and he helped the League save the world.

But above all, she thinks of Steve.  Everything had been against his favor.  When she’d met him the first time, he’d been a mortal man who’d just narrowly escaped being shot by the Germans.  He’d nearly drowned in the Themysciran Sea, and he’d been millimeters away from taking a bullet for her in an alley in London.  Just off the top of her head, Diana can think of a million ways Steve has fought against death, and then she remembers his face the first time she’d seen him again.  After 100 years of believing he was dead, she’d seen him sitting in one of the recovery rooms in the Batcave, and he’d been so...so _real_.  Despite the fact that she’s not physically with him, she can just see him, and she knows he’s alive.  Out of everyone, he was the one who was supposed to die and stay dead, but he’s the one who came back.

Hades keeps his face turned skyward, and Diana pushes herself into a seated position.  Her sword is only a few inches from her, and she grits her teeth, gathering the strength to lean over and grab it.  Her eyes dart back to Hades, who still isn’t looking at her as her fingers wrap around the hilt of her sword, and she hears a voice inside her head.

_Fear not death, Diana, for I am with you._

Warmth floods throughout her body, and the pain that had crippled her only moments before is gone.  Her skin cools, and her vision clears, and she’s left with the echo of that soft, melodious voice reverberating inside her mind.

“No!” she shouts and brings her sword up, forward, and down with all the strength she can muster.  Her sword makes contact in a diagonal across Hades’s back, and in its wake, a dark black gash is left behind.  For a moment, he makes no sound--he simply stumbles forward and falls down to his knees. Diana watches him, moving into a defensive position as she watches him realize what she’s done. “I won’t let you ruin these people’s lives, Hades.”

When he looks up at her, his eyes blaze with the purest, darkest hatred she’s ever seen, and she almost takes a step back. “You know nothing about ruination.”

_Let me in, Diana._

Diana hears the voice from earlier again, and she pauses.

_Let me in._

She freezes in place and watches Hades struggle to rise back to his feet.  She closes her eyes, and she gives in to the warm voice inside her head.

* * *

Steve can only fight so much when he has a shield.  If he had a gun, he could fire at them. If he had a sword, even, he could do something to advance forward, but he has neither of those.  All he has is Diana’s shield and an anger deep inside him he can feel it churning in his stomach. “Call them off, Waller!”

“If I call them off, you’ll either kill me or see me brought to what you think is justice,” Waller states plainly.  Her gaze bores into the side of his head as he uses the edge of his shield to bash one of the undead beings into the ground. “You can’t kill them, Captain Trevor.  You can temporarily stun them, but you can’t kill them.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Steve snaps furiously, his blue eyes flashing. “Call them off!”

“I won’t.” Amanda Waller steps back from him and looks around, taking in the sight of the Risen and how their awareness of Steve comes to life inside them. “You can’t win against them.  I’m sorry, but I will _not_ die today.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Steve says quietly.  The Risen gather around him, and he starts to realize he’s surrounded on all sides.  His eyes dart from side to side, and he fights back the swelling panic that threatens to render him completely useless.  Shield in front of him, he crouches down and remembers how he’d watched Diana take all the fire out in No Man’s Land all those years ago.  He slowly inhales and then exhales. Diana. They never got to find out just how immortal he is, but he figures now might be the perfect test.  If he’s not as immortal as Diana thought, he’ll die, and he won’t have gotten to say goodbye to her this time around. The only way he’d been able to go somewhat peacefully to his death back in 1918 was because he’d gotten to tell her goodbye.  Now, though, he isn’t getting that chance.

_Diana, I’m sorry_ , he prays silently. _I’m so sorry_.

* * *

In the Underworld, Diana hears Steve’s prayer as loudly as if he’d said it directly in her ear.  For a second, she falters, but a force within her compels her to move, and she launches forward with her sword drawn to slash at Hades again.  By now, though, the God of the Underworld has collected himself, and he crouches forward as if he’s a runner waiting for the horn to signal everyone to run.  Diana’s hand on her sword tightens, and she prepares herself for an attack, only to find herself watching in a mixture of horror and awe as sheets of bone slice through Hades’s skin and bend around his limbs and his torso, locking into place to form armor.  Slick with dark, thick blood, his armor looks exactly how Hippolyta had described it to her in the stories she’d told Diana before bed. When he straightens up, he is Hades, the God of the Underworld, the God of the Dead.

Diana watches as he holds his hand out above the ground, palm facing down as if he’s summoning something.  The soil begins to part, and a staff emerges, moving up from the ground and into his hand where he curls his fingers around it in a fist.  The staff is long and white, and it looks like it doesn’t belong in the Underworld, yet it seems perfectly at home here. Diana’s eyes remain glued to it.  There’s a story behind that staff, she knows. She’s heard her mother tell her that story hundreds of times.

She hears a whisper: _Let me._

Hades lifts his staff up above his head, clasping it in both hands, and then he brings it back down with a forceful cry of battle.  The staff plunges into the Earth, and before Diana has the opportunity to react, her wrists cross in front of her, and she slides back a couple feet, murmuring something under her breath.  She can’t understand what she’s saying, but she knows she has to stop fighting what her brain tells her--she has to listen to the voice within. When the blast starts to die away, Diana rips her arms apart, sending the same destructive force back in Hades’s direction.

Hades catches the ricochet with his staff, and he starts to draw it back with one arm as if he’s about to throw it like a javelin, but then he stops.  Everything stops, and the only thing that’s left in motion is Diana. She blinks once, twice, and she looks around, frantic as she realizes that not even the Risen are moving.  Every single thing seems frozen in time.

_Free me._

Diana lets her body relax, willing the panic in her body to slow, and she feels something release out of her in a way that isn’t painful but rather relieving.  She feels warmth on her face, and she’s reminded of Themyscira. She used to stand at the highest points of the island and turn her face up toward the Sun. Back then, she hadn’t known what she was trying to find, but now Diana thinks she knows.  Slowly, she opens her eyes and sees Persephone in front of her.

“You,” she says softly.

The goddess smiles. “Yes.”

“What are you doing?  Where’s Steve?” Diana knows she should be ready to strike just in case Persephone attacks her, but she finds herself lowering her sword and letting it rest at her side.  If Persephone lunges at her, Diana’s practically defenseless, and yet, Diana can’t seem to find it in herself to care.

“He’s safe above in the world.” Persephone’s eyes drift upward and fix on a spot, like she’s seeing straight through the layers of the Earth that separate Steve Trevor from the Underworld. “My physical body is above, too.”

“Then what are you?” Diana asks.  She sounds like a child, even _feels_ like a child asking Hippolyta questions she doesn’t understand.

“I am Persephone,” she replies simply. “I am the Goddess of the Harvest, of Rebirth.  My husband controls the dead, but I control the act of giving life. It’s a gift I’ve given your Steve Trevor, though he doesn’t understand it in its entirety yet.”

“Steve…” Diana goes to say more, but she just frowns in confusion.

“I don’t have much longer with you, but I need you to do something for me.” Persephone walks toward Hades and moves in a circle around him, looking at him as if he’s a statue, and she’s a potential buyer.  She studies him up and down and then glances over at Diana. “I need you to trust me. What I’m about to ask of you.”

Diana swallows, her mouth and throat completely dry. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to disarm my husband.  Take his staff. It won’t be easy, but it needs to be done.  After you take it, you need to get back to the world above where Steve Trevor and Amanda Waller are.” Persephone crosses back toward Diana and gazes at her, pausing a few moments before taking Diana’s face between her hands.  “But no matter what, above all else, I need you to trust me. If you want to see Steve Trevor again, that’s what you will do. Now. Do you agree?”

Diana wants to say no.  She wants to tell Persephone to go to Hell, but she knows Persephone has spent centuries in Hell.  Her jaw clenches, but she forces herself to nod. “I agree.”

Persephone smiles. “Good.  Time is running out. When I leave, you will be thrown back into the fight.”

“Why his staff?” Diana asks suddenly. “What is its power?”

The goddess sighs and looks at Hades, who is still frozen in time. “His staff is carved from the femur of Kronos, his father.  The titan who was the personification of time.”

“Kronos,” Diana whispers, realization hitting her square in the face. “Of course.”

Persephone leans forward and kisses her cheek. “Listen for me, Diana.  You will know when the time is right.”

Diana blinks, and when she opens her eyes, the goddess is gone, and Hades’s staff careens through the air toward her.  The fight has begun.

 


	22. Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to Snowecat, thesinfulship, Tobikeeper, and Felix787 for commenting!
> 
> Thank you for being patient with me and not giving up on this story! We're kind of nearing the end (I feel like I say this every chapter), so it means a lot to know that there are still some of you sticking around! To continue beating a dead horse, this chapter contains my own creative license when it comes to the Greek mythology I'm using, and I'm very aware of the variations I've created. Also, there's at least one part in here that I think might upset some people, but please don't let it make you stop at this chapter because this fic definitely isn't over yet. I don't want to give too much away in the note here (though you can probably guess it, I'm not exactly the most original writer lol) but just please don't give up on me now!
> 
> As always, I love to know what you guys think. I don't want to beg for feedback because 1) I feel like I'm just setting myself up for negative comments and 2) I don't like feeling desperate for validation, but I do love to get feedback from y'all! So on that note, enjoy! (And please hang in there with me!)

By the time the Earth beneath her feet rumbles, and screams from the ascending mist around her numb her ears, Diana is no longer frozen in time.  She and Hades remain locked in a fight, a dance of death, she humorlessly thinks to herself as she uses her lasso to pull Hades’s feet from beneath him.  She’s never fought him before, but she easily reads how he fights and uses his powers. Since he’s battling her, he can’t concentrate on controlling the dead, and even if he weren’t locked in battle, he wouldn’t want to stop them.  Diana knows he wants the dead to rise, to walk on the Earth in the land of the living. Deep in the back of her mind, she worries about Steve. What if Steve is tangled into this prophecy more than she realizes? What if Persephone’s prophecy ending with the vow someone will die means Steve?  Earlier, Steve had prayed to her, and he’d said he was sorry. Diana knows that whatever he’s apologizing for isn’t good, and she’s overwhelmed by the anxious, gut-wrenching questions tearing through her brain, questions that threaten to consume her until she consciously pushes them back even farther in order to concentrate completely on the fight.

With a slash of her sword, she catches the side of Hades’s face.  He lets out a pained cry and turns to face her, his body locked and tensed with anger, pain, and the primal need to retaliate, though he doesn’t make his move.  His eyes lift and meet Diana’s. When she sees them, she gasps. Instead of dark brown irises that look similar to hers, his eyes are completely black as if they’re made of an entire pupil.  A sickening chill sprints down Diana’s spine, and she falters as he straightens himself to his full height.

“I am the God of Death,” he says, speaking in a voice so low it’s more like a thundering rumble than an actual humanly vocal sound.  “I am God of the Underworld, and you are in my domain, Diana of Themyscira. You and your Amazons...your love for the humans...your godly blood in your own veins...you are nothing compared to me, and your half-dead pilot is even less.”

Diana’s throat tightens when he references Steve, and she is again reminded of Steve’s prayer. “He’s alive.  Don’t you touch him.”

“You think he’s alive?  That shell of a man trying desperately to defend himself against the Risen?” Hades counters.  His ink-black eyes give away no expression at all, but Diana isn’t spared of the hatred and death that would otherwise reveal themselves in anyone else’s eyes. “He’s your weak spot, my niece, and he’s not even fully alive the way you think he is.  Do you think the Fates would allow that? Do you think they would allow him to continue the way he is if you were to kill me? Because that’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Kill me?”

Diana takes a step back and shakes her head, feeling the need to cover herself, to defend herself from his gaze. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“But you want to defeat me.”

“I want you to stop hurting people.”

“Who have I hurt?” Hades challenges. “I’ve hurt no one.  Neither has my wife. So why are you so opposed to this prophecy unfurling as it needs to?  Through the Risen, my control is again established in the world of the living, and Amanda Waller gets to use them as her global army to enforce peace throughout the planet.  What is wrong about peace when no one’s getting hurt? What price are you afraid of paying?”

“This isn’t natural--it’s not right,” Diana protests as she fights the urge to run from his horrible gaze.  It’s a gaze of death, she realizes. He’s trying to kill her, can feel him trying to burn her soul out of her body. “Humanity was not meant to be ruled by the gods, Uncle.  Whether you’re killing them or using the dead to control them, that’s not what living is about.”

“Humanity used to worship us.  They would have worshipped _you_ , Diana.  That’s supposed to be the relationship between men and the gods, but you’ve lost sight of that since your time amongst the humans.  It’s natural for it to progress like this. Would Persephone have had that prophecy otherwise?”

Diana again shakes her head. “No.  You cannot control other people. You cannot use the Fates or...or prophecies or divine right to justify it.  Maybe it was like that when you and my father and Ares and the others ruled...maybe it was that way for a reason, but it’s not that way anymore, and it’s not our right to change it.  These people...they control their lives. They make the choices they need to in order to do what they need to, and it’s not up to you or I to take those choices from them.”

_Diana_ , Persephone’s voice says inside her head. _Fly_.

* * *

 Steve’s strength should have run out long ago, but it hasn’t.  He surprises himself by how he’s able to keep fighting these ghostly creatures that run at him one at a time.  Holes in the ground continue opening up, shooting more mist, more screams into the night sky. He can’t even count how many there are surrounding him because they come in waves.  It’s an entire sea of death, and he’s caught in the middle of it.

Amanda Waller disappeared shortly after the Risen closed ranks around him.  He doesn’t know where she is, and honestly, he can’t find it in himself to give half a fuck about where she is.  All he can do is focus on staying alive and getting to Diana. If these holes lead up from the Underworld, then they can lead him down _to_ the Underworld.  He can get to her.

Suddenly, he looks down and sees something protruding out of his chest.  He doesn’t feel the skeletal arm inside him, but he sees blood soaking his shirt and sputtering out from between his lips.  Surprise floods his entire body as he realizes he’s injured and falling. He falls to the ground and tries to breathe but can’t.

_Now,_ Persephone tells him.  He can barely think through the panic, let alone focus on her voice, but he looks down at the hand that’s still clenching the paper she gave him.  His hands numb and clumsy, his vision fading, he tries to open the paper. A mist of blood gently sprays over it as he exhales, and he looks at what’s written on the paper.

_Now._

With his last breath, he murmurs the written words.  His heart stops.

* * *

Diana listens to Persephone, and she shoots up toward the surface, toward the world of the living that she’s come to love as much as she loves the people who make it what it is.  Whether they make choices she agrees with or choices she abhors, the only destiny they have is the one they choose for themselves, and that’s why she fights for them. It’s why she fights for Steve and all the others like him who use their lives for good.  She nears the surface, feeling the warmth of the above world glow against her face. The screams of the Risen dull but remain present, and it doesn’t take long before Diana bursts through one of the tunnels they’d made, and she lands on solid Earth.

She expects to see destruction and chaos in every direction, but instead, she finds silence.  The Risen are there, and the ones exiting the Underworld continue to rise and join the others, but otherwise, the Risen are still, and they are silent.  Her eyes scan the crowd, and she tries to assess the situation. None of them looks at her or even acknowledges her presence. Instead, they all face one direction, and she turns to look where they’re looking.  At first, she doesn’t see anything. She can’t see what their attention is turned to, and so she takes a step forward. When the sounds of her footsteps fail to draw their notice, she knows that something is very, very wrong.

“Steve?” she calls out. “Steve, where are you?”

Silence.

Her heart starting to hurt in a way that’s all too familiar, Diana takes another step and then another as she quickens her pace. “Steve?  Answer me! Where are you?”

Again, silence.  No matter how hard she wishes for a response, a confirmation that he's alive and fighting while he waits for her, she receives only silence in return.

As much as she wants to run in the opposite direction of where the Risen are facing, she knows she can’t.  She runs toward the center, preparing herself for whatever’s waiting there for her. Whether it’s Persephone, Amanda Waller, or even Hades again, she’s prepared.  However, when she nears the spot toward which the Risen are fixated, she sees Steve lying on the ground. He’s covered in blood.

“No,” she whispers, her feet stuttering to a halt.  Her heart leaps up into her throat, nearly choking her with shock, and she bursts through the remaining Risen that obstruct her from Steve, and she falls to the ground by his side. “Steve, no.  No, no, no. Steve, look at me. Steve. Steve, open your eyes. Open them. Steve, please. Please!”

Sheer panic floods through her, and she can’t stop her hands from shaking violently as she reaches toward him, touching him.  His skin is cool to the touch. He isn’t cold, but he doesn’t open his eyes, either. Blood that has leaked from his mouth dries in the corners of his lips, and Diana is frantic as she tries to wipe it away.

“No.  No, no, no, no, no.  Steve, please. Please, don’t...don’t...Steve, I need you to look at me.  No, not again. Don’t do this to me again.” The dried blood only smears across his face and her palm in half-dried streaky clumps. “Stay with me.  Please, stay. Stay with me, Steve. Stay.”

She begs him to stay with her.  Even as she tries to start his punctured heart, she begs him not to leave her again.  She’d survived it the first time, but she isn’t sure she can bear it again. She begs him and begs him and begs him, and the only response he gives is the gentle cooling of his skin. “No!  No, Steve, please no!”

“He’s dead, Diana.” Hades’s voice comes from above her, and she jerks her head up to look at him.  His eyes are no longer black as they look down at her. They’re the brown that she’d seen the first time she saw him in the Underworld with Steve by her side, and they gaze at her with what looks like genuine sympathy. “I told you the prophecy had to come to completion.”

“No,” Diana whispers, her voice hoarse.

“What you said to me before...about humans and their choices.  It’s a beautiful ideal to believe in, and I understand why you do.  Yes, maybe you do know more about life than I do, and I see why you want to believe in free will.  But as someone who knows death better than you ever will, I know it’s impossible. _This_ is the rightful order.  What you are is something that’s above them.  Diana...look at your powers. Look at your immortality, and compare that to the lives of those around you.  Amanda Waller, Bruce Wayne...Charlie and Sammy...all of their lives together can’t equal the power of yours. It’s the rightful, natural order.”

“How could you believe that?” Diana asks, sounding every bit as hollow as she looks. “What about this is natural to you?  Death is natural, yes. Death happens to these people. It...it happens.” She stops and looks down at Steve’s still face, and she covers her mouth with her hand as if trying to physically hold back the anguished wail that threatens to release itself into the world. She swallows and closes her eyes. “But right here...this scene right here isn’t natural, Uncle.  When my father created humanity, I can’t believe that this was what he wanted for them.”

“No one knew your father’s intentions,” Hades says quietly. “My brother was a powerful man.  More powerful than the rest of us, and it was my own envy that turned me against him and led me to being God of the Underworld.  In some ways, you remind me of him.”

“No.” Diana turns her face down toward the ground. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“You are in pain right now.”

_Now._

Persephone’s warm voice sends a new feeling through Diana’s body.  The pain of her shattered heart somehow lessens, and she finds the strength and the desire to look up.  When her eyes meet Hades’s, his brown eyes revert to black, and that same burn she’d felt when she’d looked into his eyes in the Underworld comes back.

“You can be at peace with Steve Trevor, or you can can live your greatest life,” Hades says.  All around her, the Risen make quiet sounds that are a mix between chirping and shuffling. The branches of the trees in the cemetery begin to sway as a breeze moves the leaves.  Diana’s chest constricts, and an icy chill settles at the base of her spine and works its way upward and outward, spreading through her veins and deep into every crevice of her bones and her body.  She could easily give up, she realizes. She could let him suck the life out of her and no longer experience the pain of losing someone. Weakening, she allows herself to imagine Steve’s face as she knew it when he was alive.  She feels like she’s on the beach again looking down at his face and realizing he’s a man. His blue eyes had been so wide with surprise and awe when he’d looked up at her. For a man so damaged and so nearly defeated, he’d had a warmth to him she’d fallen in love with very quickly.  All she has to do is let Hades continue to burn her supposedly immortal soul out of her body, and then she can be with Steve in the Underworld. They’d both be in Elysium--she knows that even as Hades’s current foe, he would place the two of them in eternal paradise. As she loses focus, she wonders if Steve is already on Charon’s raft on the River Styx again.

Just as she thinks maybe it would hurt less if she joined Steve on Charon’s raft, she remembers the last time she’d said goodbye to him.  His body had been so warm, his face hot to the touch as she’d grabbed onto him, trying to keep him with her so he wouldn’t run to the plane.  She hadn’t been able to hear him, but in her heart, she’d known what he was about to do. In the moment when he chose to give up his life to save millions of others’, he had never been more alive.  He chose to die so others could live. She will not choose to die just so her pain can die with her.

Hades holds his staff carved from Kronos’s femur, and he raises it over his head.  He begins to bring it down in what will be the final blow, the final thing Diana is to see, and she makes her choice.  She winds her right arm back and feels the crackle of electricity in the air. It fills every sense in her body, inside every cell as if it has the right to be there, and Diana welcomes it.  Her body buzzes, and she can’t tell if it’s from the energy she’s collecting or the final pulls of Hades’s influence on the removal of her soul, but the roaring buzz surging inside her gets lost in the thunder above.

Hades’s staff begins its descent down toward her, and with the last bit of her conscious will to fight, she brings her right arm down from above and behind herself, and she smashes her gauntlets together.  From her gauntlets, electricity bursts forth in a violent, forceful emission of power right at the very second Kronos’s femur makes contact with them. There’s an explosion, but Diana isn’t moved by it, nor is she deafened by its roar.  She holds still, waiting for the energy to fade and the effects of the explosion to lessen. When she opens her eyes, Hades has been blown back several feet. He struggles to stand to his feet as he pants hard trying to catch his breath.

“What have you done?” he rasps.

It’s then that Diana sees his staff broken in front of her.  Two pieces that had once been a single unit. “I broke it.”

“I’ll kill you,” Hades thunders. “I’ll--”

Before he can say anything else, Persephone appears without warning, her expression hard to read as she kneels to pick up Kronos’s snapped femur. “Your staff.” She looks up at Diana. “You did this.”

“Persephone, my Queen.” Hades holds his hand out to her. “Please.  You’re the goddess of beginnings, not of death. Don’t take on this burden yourself.  Let me bear it for you.”

Persephone blinks, looking at the pieces as if she’s in complete awe of them. “You did this.”

“My Queen, let me be the one to end Diana’s immortal life.  You can’t bear it, but I can. Let--”

He doesn’t get any further into his plea.  Persephone has crossed the distance between where she and Diana stood toward Hades, and she’s done something to him to cut off his voice.  For a moment, Diana watches in blank apathy. Something is happening, but she doesn’t know what. She watches in silence, and only when she see Hades jerk as Persephone moves her arm does she realize something far more sinister has occurred.

Persephone steps back from Hades and looks down at her handiwork.  The broken, sharpened ends of Kronos’s femur protrude from Hades’s body.  One is lodged in his chest where his heart is, the other is through the bottom of his jaw and up into his head.  The urge to vomit overwhelms Diana as she understands the scene in front of her, but she can only stare in a mixture of horror and shock as Hades falls to the ground.  

Over her shoulder, Persephone turns her head to look at Diana.  When their eyes meet, the Goddess of Rebirth smiles. “He’s dead.”


	23. Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to thesinfulship, Snowecat, youdefygravity, justwannaread17, and Felix787 for commenting!
> 
> This chapter might seem like it's the last, but it's not. There are still several things to wrap up before we're done, but we're close! Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter. Honestly, I was more surprised by the attention given to the way Hades was killed than the fact that STEVE IS DEAD, but that's the way the cookie crumbles!
> 
> As always, I love hearing back from you guys. It absolutely makes my day, and I appreciate it so, so much! Enjoy :)

For several moments, Diana simply stands still and quiet as she watches Hades’s body on the ground.  She blinks once, twice, and then a third time, and she can no longer support herself in a standing position.  She slides down to her knees, eyes still on Hades’s lifeless body, and her stomach contracts. After all the battles she’s fought and the horrors she’s seen, she’s rarely been sick to her stomach, and yet here she is on her knees, vomiting and coughing up spit.  Nausea slices through her where she can feel it from the top of her scalp to the very backs of her heels, and she closes herself. _Breathe, Diana.  Breathe_ , she tells herself.  If she can keep herself breathing, then maybe everything will suddenly be right with the world, she reasons.

When she opens her eyes, Hades is still dead, and Persephone is leaning over him, murmuring something.  Diana watches in a mixture of horror and awe as suddenly, the ground seems to soften, and Hades begins to descend down into the Earth.  She coughs, struggling to stand on her feet again. “What--what are you doing?”

“I performed a spell to return him from whence he came,” Persephone says softly.  Diana coughs again and spits more bile onto the ground, watching how blood from a cut on her lip she hadn’t even realized was there mixes with it.  She looks away to avoid getting sick again, and she watches as Hades melts into the ground until he’s gone.

“He’s dead?” she asks.  The words don’t feel as though they come from her, as though her brain has formed them and then sent off the signals to make the muscles of her mouth and tongue move to shape them.  She knows she’s speaking, but she can’t understand what she’s saying. More than anything else, she feels like she’s on autopilot, and she’s outside her body watching someone who’s supposed to be her control her physical form.

“Yes and no,” Persephone replies and turns to look at Diana with those calm eyes.  This time, however, her eyes don’t drown with sadness. Instead of the sorrow that had been Persephone’s signature feature, there’s a different kind of brightness that brings a new beauty to the goddess’s already beautiful face. “Gods never really die, Diana.  Even after the battle with Ares all those thousands of years ago, and everyone was defeated...they didn’t truly die.”

“Then where do they go?” Diana frowns. “Does this mean my father is alive?”

“Yes and no,” Persephone repeats. “When we die, we’re sent to Tartarus.  Technically, it’s so far below and inaccessible that it can’t even be considered Tartarus, but ultimately, that’s all you need to know.  Depending on the severity of the cause of death, gods can be there from a century to thousands of years gathering their strength and reigniting their life force.  After Ares’s victory, the majority of them have spent since then attempting to regain the life that they had before, but it’s difficult when humans no longer believe in them.”

Diana listens, and she understands, but a part of her isn’t quite following with what Persephone says.  When she blinks, she sees the image of Hades’s body sinking into the Earth, and when she opens her eyes, she sees Persephone shoving Kronos’s femur into her husband’s heart.  She takes an unsteady breath and shakes her head just a little. “My father...there’s a chance he’ll return.”

“Yes.  If you aren’t killed before then.” Persephone says it in such a calm voice that Diana feels she’s been punched in the diaphragm and can no longer breathe.  She bends over and puts her hands on her knees as if resting, though in reality, she needs some kind of support or she’ll fall over again.

“I can die.”

“You’re somewhat easier to kill than say, your father Zeus.  Hades. Myself.” Persephone closes the space between them and gently takes Diana’s face between her hands, looking at the Amazon princess with so much love and warmth that for a moment, Diana could easily be fooled into believing that she’s leaning into her mother’s touch. “But you’re still not easy to kill.  The things you face on a regular basis can hardly touch you.”

“Do I have a soul like..?” Diana goes to gesture to the Risen but finds that they’re no longer there.  Confused, she pulls away from Persephone and looks across the deserted, destroyed cemetery. Headstones lie broken, chipped, shattered, and halved all over the expansive stretch of land, reminding Diana of No Man’s Land. “Where are they?”

“With Hades being dead, his connection to them has been severed.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know.” Persephone moves and stands beside Diana as she, too, gazes out over the decimated graveyard. “They might have returned back to the Underworld, or they might be out in the world of the living.  Whatever promises he and I both made to Amanda Waller about their working for her is no longer valid, though. Without Hades, they won’t do as they were bound.”

“You knew that?” Diana turns her head to look at her immortal aunt. “You knew they wouldn’t do her bidding when you promised them to her in the first place?”

Persephone nods. “Perhaps it was wrong of me to do.  Lying has never come easily to me, not the way it has to my husband or his brothers.  Even Aphrodite and Hera, gods protect them, are more accustomed to it than I am, but I needed Waller’s trust so that the prophecy could come to fruition.” She looks back at Diana. “Do you understand?”

“You used Amanda Waller to free yourself.  I understand.” Diana’s voice is stilted. Amanda Waller is something she’ll deal with later, and already, she isn’t looking forward to it.  For now, though, she’ll let Amanda get a headstart in her retreat going off the grid, and when the time is right, Diana will find her. Now, though, Diana can’t think about that. “Without Hades, the Risen don’t work for her, and you aren’t held captive in the Underworld.  Now that he’s gone, you’re free.”

“Do you judge me?”

Diana holds Persephone’s gaze, studying the goddess’s face and feeling for the first time since her reemergence from the Underworld like she might be in control of herself again.  She looks at Persephone and tries to imagine what it was like to be taken to a land of death and suffering when you were specifically made to celebrate creation, life, and rebirth.  She tries to imagine how it feels to be trapped with a man you don’t love for thousands of years without end, only getting a small amount of that time to return to that world of life you’d come from.  Finally, she has to close her eyes and look away, her chest aching as she does so. “No. I cannot judge you.”

“You are a good woman, Diana.” Persephone’s voice softens even more. “Hippolyta couldn’t have done better than to have you for a daughter.  I can only imagine the sorrow she’s felt in your absence.”

Diana’s throat tightens, and burning tears prick at her eyes.  She’s been gone from Themyscira long enough to not feel the grief and the ache for her mother in such a severe, debilitating way, but her heart has been scraped raw, and more than anything she wishes she could see her mother again.  She wishes she could know if she’s truly made Hippolyta proud of her. Even now, she wonders if Hippolyta has forgiven her for leaving with Steve.

Steve.

Diana’s head jerks up, and every muscle in her body tightens as she remembers the last time she saw him.  Without another word to Persephone, Diana turns and rushes back to the spot where she’d left him. Hades is dead, she tells herself, so that means Steve can live again.  She repeats this to herself as she runs, finding her way back.

Again, the sight of Steve’s still body is what she sees first.  Her feet slow, and her hands reach out for him to check him again for vital signs.  She expects to find him breathing, at least. If nothing else, he should have a pulse and breath in his body.  Her expectations continue to rise, but the moment her hands touch his face, and she feels his cold skin, she knows nothing has changed since the last time she left him.

“Steve, no,” she whispers.  She grabs his hand and holds it, leaning her cheek against the back of his hand.  Again, she sees the image of Persephone stabbing Hades, and she knows what that had felt like for him because she feels it now.  The pain radiates from deep inside her chest and sears every nerve, every muscle, every bone, every cell that makes up her body. Before she can stop them, tears spill down over her cheeks, and she cries.

She knows she should have expected to lose him again, but she’d convinced herself that she wouldn’t.  She’d told herself that there was no way the world could be cruel enough to take him from her a second time, but she should have _known_.  Losing him once had been painful enough.  More often than she’d like to admit, she has flashbacks to the night he’d said goodbye to her on the airstrip.  She can still feel his coat bunched in her fists as she’d clutched at him, trying so hard to make him stay, to make him let her be the one to save the world and, subsequently, him.  The memory of his hands on her face...that night in Veld when he’d stayed in her room, and she’d learned that men might not be essential for pleasure, but he was certainly very good at giving it...seeing him fight to protect the villagers and realizing she’d fallen in love with him.  But this time, she has new memories with him cutting into the tender flesh of her brain, too. Steve learning how to text, using the machine to make coffee for her, and more.

Then she remembers how the last time they’d talked, _really_ talked, before they’d gotten to the cemetery, they’d been angry.  She’d been absolutely furious with him, and now his skin is cold, and he is dead.  Fresh sobs rip themselves out of her throat, and she loses herself in this new, acute grief. “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t feel Persephone’s presence behind her, and it isn’t until the goddess is kneeling beside her that she remembers she isn’t alone. “I wasn’t supposed to lose him again.  I...he wasn’t even here…”

Persephone puts a gentle hand on Diana’s back and looks at her with nothing but sympathy written across her face. “Life and death are two very different things, but the one thing they have in common is that neither is fair.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Diana’s voice breaks, but she doesn’t look at Persephone, still holding Steve’s cold hand to her cheek. “Watching my friends die over the years hasn’t been fair.  Now Steve...again…”

Persephone quiets and removes her hand. “Diana.”

Diana doesn’t reply.

“Diana. Look at me.”

Slowly, Diana does.

* * *

The world is dark, and Steve stands on the riverbank, looking down into the water.  He knows where he is. He remembers it well, even more so now that he’s here in a different form.  Beneath the river’s black surface, he can’t see a thing, but he can feel the energy that runs through it.  It’s odd to think of death as having energy, but it does, and he feels it as clearly as he can see the black ripples in front of him.

When Steve looks up, he sees a raft approaching with its guide leading it toward him.  He straightens up and edges closer to the bank, looking evenly at Charon. “I’m back.”

“I see,” Charon replies.  Steve waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t, so he steps onto the raft. “Three times in one century, Captain Trevor.  Never a good sign.”

“Surely I can’t be the only one who’s died and come back to life multiple times,” Steve quips.  For someone who’s just died, he’s remarkably spunky, though that doesn’t say much.

“You’d be surprised.” Charon studies him for a few moments, his eyes narrowing a little. “Do you remember your time here before?”

“Now I do.  I didn’t when I was here with…” Steve’s voice trails off, and he feels his breath leave him.  He closes his eyes. “Diana. Shit. No.”

“What do you remember?”

Steve’s eyes snap open, and he meets Charon’s gaze with furious eyes. “What I remember doesn’t matter.  What matters is I left Diana. Again. I was killed. Again. All I do is come into her life, ruin it, and then leave her to deal with the aftermath.”

“Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t becoming.”

“Fuck you!” Steve snaps, feeling his fury increase by inches. “Do you know what it’s like to love someone and know that you’re the reason you destroyed them?  Yeah, you might know death and suffering a hell of a lot more than I do, but you don’t get to fucking lecture me on feeling sorry for myself when I realize how much I’ve hurt the person I love more than anything because you don’t fucking know what it’s like to feel love.”

“No,” Charon simply agrees. “But I’ve seen it.  Death and love are far more intertwined than you can imagine.”

Steve blinks quickly and looks away. “I’m realizing that way more than I want to.”

“What do you remember?” Charon asks.

Steve looks back at him, irritation written all over his face. “Seriously?  You’re really asking me that again?”

Charon doesn’t reply.

Deflated, Steve sighs and shakes his head. “I remember standing on that riverbank like I did just now.  I remember you coming up in your raft and telling me I was dead, and you were here to take me to the Underworld.  When I got on, you explained this was the River Styx, and we set sail, and you asked me if I regretted dying.”

“Do you remember what you said back?”

“Yeah...yeah, I do.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no.” Steve closes his eyes. “I regretted leaving Diana and hurting her, but I knew that what I’d done had saved millions, and I couldn’t regret that.”

“You’re the first one on my raft who’s said no,” Charon remarks, his face unreadable. “No one has ever said they didn’t regret dying.  I’ve never come across that before.”

Steve opens his eyes and looks steadily at this ancient figure who’s seen more tragedy than anyone could or should imagine in a lifetime. “Well...glad I’m your first then.  I guess.”

“You underestimate the significance.  Your response was why Persephone chose you to be the subject of her prophecy.  Pure of heart. It takes a certain person to mourn the life they left behind and yet not regret it.  You had just lost the love of your life, quite literally the love of your life, and you couldn’t say you regretted it.”

Steve frowns. “I didn’t ask to be a part of a prophecy.”

“No.  But you were.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“None of you does.”

“Did you?  Ask for this?”

Charon pauses for a moment, his expression again impossible to decipher. “No.”

“Ok then.”

“You were snatched from my raft shortly after you replied, you know.  Persephone laid her claim, and you were put back into your body, though you were left dormant until your century was up.”

“And now I’m here, so looks like I’ve come full circle.”

“Maybe.”

Steve pauses, looking harder at him. “What does that mean?”

Charon smiles, a slow, dry grin that goes nowhere near reaching his eyes. “Goodbye, Captain Trevor.”

* * *

Diana does as Persephone says, and she turns her head to look at her.  Persephone has her hands pressed to the ground, her fingers pushed down into the soil, and she looks as though she’s concentrating.

“What are you doing?” Diana asks.

Persephone doesn’t reply, instead just removing her hands from the Earth and moving toward Steve’s head.  Diana watches her. “What are you doing?”

“My husband might have been the God of Death, but he married the Goddess of Rebirth.” Persephone puts her hands on either side of Steve’s head, and she steadies herself. “My prophecy didn’t end where you thought it did.”

“What does that mean?  What are you doing?” Diana repeats, hearing the panic in her voice but unable to quell it.

“Someone must die,” Persephone recites. “Your Captain Trevor _did_ die.  He died right before you rose from the Underworld with my husband.  The final pieces of the puzzle were coming together to lead to Hades’s death, and now Hades is dead.  The end has been achieved.”

“I don’t understand.” Diana frowns.

“The end doesn’t have to be the end.” Persephone looks up at her, expecting Diana to understand.

Diana takes a step back. “What?”

Suddenly, a flash of light comes from the sides of Steve’s head, and upon closer look, Diana can see that it’s Persephone’s palms generating the light and directing it into his temples.  As the brightness increases, Persephone murmurs words Diana can’t quite make out, but she recognizes enough to know that it’s a spell. Fear grips her heart as one part of her screams to make Persephone stop while another part of her is surprisingly calm, and it’s that calm part that worries Diana more than anything.  She should be demanding answers, making Persephone tell her what she’s doing, but she isn’t doing any of that. Yes, she’s afraid, but she also trusts this woman who had the power to kill the God of Death.

Steve’s body jerks a little, and Diana moves toward him as panic takes over her again. “What are you doing?”

Persephone’s chant increases in volume, the syllables getting louder and faster as the light coming from her palms grows brighter and brighter.  Diana lifts an arm to shield her face as she closes her eyes, and she blindly reaches out, though for what, she doesn’t know. The light burns, and Diana feels heat crawl over her skin.  Right as she starts to feel her eyes growing unbearably hot from this awful brightness, the light is gone.

When Diana lowers her arm, Persephone is gone.  Diana looks around, trying to see where the goddess has gone, but there’s no trace.  Her instinct tells her to get up and look for her, but a single sound stops her from moving.  Steve coughs.

Her head snaps back toward him, and she sees his chest rise before it stutters out a cough.  Her heart flips, and she moves back to him, grasping his face between her hands. She can’t feel her own pulse, nor can she feel anything else as she takes his face and looks down at him, the memory of his cold skin stronger than her belief in the impossible. “Steve? Steve, look at me.  Look at me, ok? Steve?”

He coughs again and blearily blinks his eyes, confused.  When he sees her above him, he pauses and squints his eyes.

“Wow.”


	24. Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to MK, nymphrea, Flash, LScribbles, thesinfulship, and Felix787 for commenting!
> 
> SO HOW ABOUT THOSE WW84 SET PHOTOS, HUH? That was definitely some inspiration I needed, and this is the chapter that resulted. It's a little short, but it gives me that Diana/Steve interaction I was missing writing in the past couple chapters!
> 
> As always, I love hearing back from y'all and hope y'all haven't abandoned this fic yet! It's slowly but surely plodding along, even if there's an emphasis on the "slowly." Enjoy! :)

Diana stops breathing.  When she was a child and learning how to fight under the tutelage of her adored aunt and respected general, she used to hold her breath.

“Breathe, Diana,” Antiope told her sharply. “When a fighter is tense, the body locks up.  When the body is locked, the fighter cannot be as quick as she needs to be. You must always be ready, and you cannot be if you forget to breathe.”

“I’m breathing!” Diana protested.  Even though she’d known Antiope was right, she’d always insisted on arguing, half-convinced that she could fool her older, experienced aunt.  If only she had known then that no matter how excellent of a fighter she became, she would never be able to fool Antiope. Antiope, who knew every Amazon’s movement and could mimic one’s fighting style just from observation.  Antiope, who pushed herself to be better despite the fact that she knew she was the best. Antiope, who had shown Diana as much tenderness and love as she had frustration and determination. If only Diana had known that Antiope was right about everything Diana had ever tried to challenge her on.

With a gasp, Diana forces herself to inhale, and she’s brought back into the present, away from her childhood and islands surrounded by the purest blue.  Instead of trying to call forth the memory of the sea that had nurtured her from the moment she was born, she looks into the achingly familiar blue of Steve’s eyes as he stares up at her.  She keeps her hands on his face, hardly noticing that they’re shaking. “Steve. Steve?”

He blinks slowly, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time, and then he winces. “What the hell happened?”

Diana’s hands fly across him as she touches him.  She needs to feel that he’s alive. She needs to know that this image in front of her is more than an image because if she’s looking at a mirage, she doesn’t know how she will be able to handle losing him for the third time in her immortal life.  When she’d touched him before, his skin had been cool, but his usual heat is back. A healthy pink shades his cheeks, and when he starts to sit up, she feels the muscles of his arms flex beneath the fabric of his shirt.

“Hey...hey, what...Diana?” he asks curiously, watching her as she presses her hands to him on every available surface of his body.  She doesn’t speak, nor does she look him in the eyes while she examines him. “Diana?”

She ignores him and places her fingertips on his neck beneath his jaw, feeling for a pulse and then moving on to check his wrist, too.  She presses the index and middle fingers of her right hand against his wrist and feels the gentle, steady thump of his heartbeat. Her eyes close, and she brings his wrist up to her mouth.  As if she’s terrified he’ll break, she kisses that beautiful little beat of his body.

“Diana?” Steve asks again.  His voice softens as he sees the look on her face.  He’s seen her on the verge of tears several times, but he’s never actually seen her cry.  When he thinks about how much he loves her, how absolutely breathtaking she is when her face lights up with laughter, he knows he doesn’t ever want to know what she looks like when her heart breaks. “What happened?”

Diana opens her eyes and looks at him with a shaky smile.  Her eyes drift down to the ragged gash in his shirt, and she nods at it, drawing his attention there. He touches the ripped fabric, looking at it like it’s not on his body, and he lets out a quiet sigh. “So it looks like I missed a few things, huh?”

Diana’s throat tightens, and she nods.  She swallows hard, her hand still clutching his wrist. “We need to get you home.”

“Did we win?” he asks.  She slips her arm beneath his waist to help him stand, and he winces. “At least tell me we won.  God, I feel like a tank ran over me.”

Diana pauses as she gets her first good look at the surrounding cemetery now that all the chaos has quieted.  Headstones lie broken in half, shattered, and split like jagged teeth emerging from an angry mouth. Some headstones have been completely demolished, leaving graves with more than just forgotten memories.  All around her, holes gape up toward the sky, and she’s left with a strange hollow feeling she can’t justify. Tearing her gaze away from the destruction, she steadies Steve’s leaning weight against her. “We won.”

“Good,” he sighs, relief consuming his eyes. “Good.”

“Are you in pain?  Will you be all right if I fly us home?” Diana asks.  At some point, she’ll have to return for the car they’d arrived in, but she can’t focus on that now.  For the current moment, she has to focus on Steve and getting him back to her apartment alive.

“I’ve never turned down a flight, and I don’t plan to start now,” he quips in return.  She doesn’t understand how he can still give her that little half-grin he wears when he jokes, but she’s thankful just to see it.

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah.  I can handle it.”

Diana isn’t completely convinced, but she won’t actually be convinced he’s ok and alive until she’s able to give him a thorough examination.  She picks him up in her arms, and without another word, lifts up off the ground and into the air. In the back of her mind, she plays the image of Persephone killing Hades over and over, hears Persephone explaining what she’d done and why.  Diana isn’t sure if she’s angry or thankful--on one hand, Persephone caused all of this to happen just for the sake of escaping the Underworld. But on the other hand, Diana can’t condemn her for wanting to be free of a world where there’s nothing but death.  Living with death and only death when you’re the goddess of rebirth is unimaginable, and so Diana knows she won’t pursue Persephone. Even so, she’s not sure that she could actually harm the goddess after she brought Steve back to life again. Diana has many questions, but she knows better than to take this little sliver of time for granted.  Every moment she spends with him is one more than she thought she’d ever have.

The flight home feels as though it takes hours.  In reality, it only takes several minutes, and the reason it even takes  _ that  _ long is because she slows her speed down for Steve’s sake.  He keeps his eyes closed during the flight, not necessarily because he feels ill or can’t handle it, but because his eyes keep watering with the cool air blasting into them.  But when Diana lands on the balcony to her apartment and sets him down, he opens his eyes again.

“Amazing,” he murmurs.  Diana messes with the lock on the sliding glass door until she hears it click, and she slides the door open.  She looks at him, waiting for him to go through first.

“Come on,” she says quietly.

“How do you do that?” Steve asks, walking through the doorway that leads from the balcony into her room.  Even though it’s her place and not his, he feels strangely at home here. Whether that’s due to the place itself or the company he keeps when he’s there, he has an idea as to why. “Does no one see you come flying onto the balcony?  Don’t you have a secret identity?”

“I’ve taken care of it,” she replies.  Steve waits for her to reply, but she doesn’t.  Instead, she comes into the apartment and slides the door shut, locking it behind her. “This is the safest possible place we can be right now.  The only place safer would be Bruce’s cave, but it’s unnecessary for us to go there.”

“So what happened?” Steve asks.  Diana just looks at him. He waits, but she doesn’t move or speak. “Diana?  What happened out there?”

“I fought Hades in the Underworld, and he unleashed the Risen.”

“Those were the ghosts I was fighting.” Steve puts two and two together.

Diana nods, feeling her throat tighten yet again with all the emotions she’s struggling to keep under control. “Hades brought them back, and we fought.  Persephone intervened and brought us both topside. When I came back...you were dead.”

For a moment, Steve doesn’t react.  But when he does, his face twists with regret and sadness. “Diana...I’m sorry.”

Quickly, she shakes her head. “No.  Don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“I know.” She looks as though she wants to take a step toward him, but she stops herself. “You were dead, and Persephone appeared and killed Hades.  The whole thing was a trap for you...she used you to bring herself back into this world.”

Somehow, Steve can’t find it in himself to feel surprised.  He wonders if he somehow knew deep inside that there was more to the prophecy and the intricacies in Persephone’s story than she’d presented.  If he were in her position, he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing. “Where is she now?”

Diana shakes her head. “I don’t know.  After she brought you back, she disappeared.”

“She brought me back.”

“Yes.”

Steve sits on the edge of Diana’s bed and releases a sigh he’s been holding in for what feels like a century.  Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his knees and lets his head drop. “She owed it to me. She used me to come back here, and when I died, she owed it to me to bring me back.”

“I don’t know,” Diana numbly replies. “I didn’t ask her to, nor did she say she was going to.  She just...did.”

Steve processes this information, wondering what the hell he’s done in his life to give him not one but  _ two  _ opportunities to essentially come back from the dead.  Out of everyone he knows, he can think of 50 other people who deserve it more.  From the kids he’d led during the War who’d fallen before they’d even had a chance to leave their teens to the woman who raised him and taught him how to love, he pictures the faces of everyone who deserves this opportunity more than he does.  He hates himself for being the one to receive it and not them, but mostly, he hates himself for feeling grateful. Selfishly, he wants every single second with Diana that he can get, and if he gets those extra seconds through being resurrected twice in a lifetime, then he can’t be completely mad at the situation, and he hates himself for it.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Please don’t apologize.” She sits on the bed beside him, but she doesn’t look at him.  She looks down at the wood floor beneath the soles of her boots as if she can find the truth burned there with embers. “I can’t stand hearing you do that to yourself.”

He hears the slightest shake in her voice, and he turns his head to face her.  Her gaze is still trained on the floor, and her whole body is tense. He has the feeling that if he were to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces, and this time, he would be the one to lose her. He wants to say something, but his vocal cords no longer seem to work, and he just swallows everything back down.

Finally, she turns toward him. “I’d like to examine you.  Just to check and make sure you’re truly all right.”

“I feel fine,” Steve replies.  He means it to be gentle, to be reassuring, but Diana isn’t sidetracked by it.

“I’d still like to,” she says patiently.  They both know that if he won’t give her permission, she won’t do it, but Steve thinks about if it were the other way around.  If he had lost her once already, then a second time only to be brought back  _ again _ , he would be as tightly wound and overprotective the way she’s being right now.  He can’t fault her for behaving exactly as he would, and so he gives her a quiet nod.

“Ok,” he replies, his voice soft.  He stays still on the edge of the bed and lets Diana check his pulse, listen to his lungs, and prod his limbs for any bruises or broken bones.  He isn’t sure whether he’s surprised or concerned to see that he’s ultimately unharmed on the surface. When he thinks back to the fight in the cemetery and remembers the Risen all around him, he remembers being cut and slashed several times, but looking at his skin now, there isn’t a single trace of any of those cuts and slashes.

“Nothing,” she murmurs as she smooths out the sleeve of his shirt. “There’s nothing wrong or abnormal about you that I can see.”

“I told you I was ok, didn’t I?” Steve asks.  He means it in a light way, to tease her and make her smile, but she doesn’t give him the playful reaction he’d hoped for.  Her jaw clenches, and she looks away from him again. “Diana? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I was just...I don’t know.” He sighs and runs a hand over his eyes. “What’s going on?  I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me, and I have no idea what it is.”

When Diana doesn’t reply, he thinks she isn’t going to answer at all.  She sits silently without speaking, and right as Steve is about to ask her again what the problem is, she speaks so quietly it’s barely possible to hear her. “The night you died was the worst night of my life.”

“Diana…” Steve wants to comfort her, but he has no goddamn clue what to say.  Helpless, he reaches out to her but lowers his hand when she doesn’t come any closer, her back still turned to him.

“Sammy, Chief, and Charlie already knew you were dead when I saw them on the airfield after Ares was gone.  I didn’t know it then, but they’d helped you get to the plane, even though they tried to talk you out of it at first.  Still...I don’t think they knew how to comfort me, let alone comfort themselves. After all, they’d known you far longer than I had, and they had so many memories and stories about you.  All I had was that tiny moment of time that eventually shrank more and more with each passing year.” She pauses, taking a breath and closing her eyes as if by doing so, she can watch it all taking place again right in front of her. “I didn’t cry that night or even the night after.  I was too much in shock, I guess. I’d also lost so much that I didn’t want to face the reality that I’d lost you, too. My home, my aunt, my mother...all my sisters on Themyscira...I didn’t even have them to return to now that you were gone, and I didn’t even deserve the right to feel sad about it because I’d known that when making my decision to leave in the first place.”

She pauses again, and Steve reaches out, putting his hand on the bed beside her instead of on her. “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Diana.  I understand if it’s too…”

Unsure of the word he’s looking for, he just trails off and goes silent, helpless.

“I have to,” she replies. “It wasn’t until the first night back in London when I saw Etta again that I cried.  Telling her was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. In some ways, she knew you better than Charlie, Chief, and Sammy did, and when she started crying, I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I cried with her.  You know, she was the one who decided to put your picture down on the board of fallen heroes in the middle of town. She had several photographs of you, and she chose one from when you’d been assigned your first plane, and you were in full uniform.”

Despite himself, Steve’s mouth curves up into a tiny half-smile. “I remember that picture.  And I remember that plane, too.”

“She told me how proud you were to be a pilot, and so she chose to put that picture on the board for people to see.  I should’ve told her about your watch, but I couldn’t. I wanted at least one thing to be something that had belonged to me...as silly as it sounds.  You’d made all these memories with all these other people who knew you, and I had your watch. And I told you I still have it...I do. I’ve never misplaced it or let anything happen to it.  It looks exactly the same as it did the night you gave it to me and told me you loved me.” She looks back at him. “Do you remember what you said to me before you gave me it?”

“I told you I wished we had more time.” Steve wants to tell her he’ll never forget that night.  Even if he wanted to rip the memories out of his brain and shred them to microscopic pieces, he would never be rid of the exact moment he’d said goodbye to her.

Diana nods. “And you gave me the watch.  You gave me the time you weren’t going to have.”

“It’s poetic when you put it like that.”

“I didn’t intend for it to be so.” She shifts on the bed so she can look at him directly, no longer choosing to look anywhere but him. “I’ve tried so hard to do the most that I could with the time that I had, Steve.  Even when I didn’t think I deserved to wear the armor, I tried not to waste that time. It was incredibly important to me to make everything count and make things better when I could. And learning that I couldn’t always fix everything that was broken was another hard lesson I came to know later, but I knew I needed to try whenever I could.  Then when you came back...when Bruce took me into that room and there you were…”

“I can’t imagine what that was like for you,” Steve says, his voice and his entire body softening with the genuine weight of his meaning. “When I woke up, it felt like I’d only been asleep for several days.  You’d lived 100 years thinking I was gone.”

She nods and puts her hand on the bed, turning her palm up toward him in offering. “In the cemetery...I thought I’d lost you again.  Once was hard enough but twice…” She blinks hard and shakes her head. “I’d been so convinced that you could live forever, but the Risen have the power to kill even that which is mortal, and when I saw you...I can’t do it again.”

Steve takes her hand and frowns a little in confusion. “What are you saying, Diana?”

She meets his eyes and blinks back the shiny glossiness that’s come over them in the past few minutes. “I’m saying don’t you dare go somewhere I can’t bring you back from.”

Steve’s hand squeezes her, and he nods.  He gives a gentle tug on her hand to pull her closer to him. “Ok.”

“I mean it.”

He smiles, his face sincere. “I do, too.  I promise. A promise is unbreakable.”

“Don’t you do it,” she whispers shakily.  She blinks harder to keep the tears at bay, but the more she blinks, the hotter the tears burn against her eyes.

“Diana.” He reaches up and tucks a piece of hair back behind her ear. “I promise you.  I will never go somewhere you can’t bring me back. Ok? Look at me, angel. I love you.  I love you so much, and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Diana’s eyes search his face.  What she’s looking for isn’t clear, but she doesn’t get far as face crumples. For the first time in a long time, she lets herself cry.  She’s held herself together for a century, only allowing cracks here and there, but she has very rarely allowed herself to fall apart and cry the way she suddenly feels the need to.  Whenever she  _ has  _ let herself cry, it’s been in a place where she felt, and it’s been so goddamn long since she’s felt safe.  But here with Steve--suddenly, his arms are around her, and she’s sobbing into his destroyed shirt while she clings to him--she feels safe, and so she cries.  She cries for the home and the mother she left so many years ago. She cries for the girl she’d been, for the woman she is now. She cries for Etta and Chief and Charlie and Sammy.  She cries for Steve. As she holds onto him, his whispers of reassurance and love in her ear, she cries for herself, too.


End file.
